m  I  rv 

DUR  AMERICAN  POETS 


FOUR  AMERICAN  POETS 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 

HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW 
JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 
OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

A  BOOK  FOR  YOUNG  AMERICANS 


BY 

SHERWIN    CODY 

Author  of  "The  Art  of  Short  Story  Writing,"  "Story  Compositioa T ' 
"In  the  Heart  of  the  Hills,"  etc. 


WERNER   SCHOOL   BOOK   COMPANY 

NEW  YORK         CHICAGO        BOSTON 


THE 

FOUR    GREAT    AMERICANS    SERIES 

Biographical  Stories  of  Great  Americans 
for  Young  Americans 

EDITED    BY 

JAMES  BALDWIN,  Ph.D. 

TN  these  biographical  stories  the  lives  of  great  Amer- 
A  icans  are  presented  in  such  a  manner  as  to  hold  the 
attention  of  the  youngest  reader.  In  these  lives  the 
child  finds  the  most  inspiring  examples  of  good  citizen 
ship  and  true  patriotism. 

VOLUMES  NOW  READY  : 

I.     FOUR  GREAT  AMERICANS 

GEORGE  WASHINGTON,   BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 
DANIEL  WEBSTER,  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 
BY  JAMES  BALDWIN,  Ph  D. 
Cloth,  246  pages,      -  Price?  so  cents 

II.     FOUR  AMERICAN  PATRIOTS 

PATRICK  HENRY,  ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 
ANDREW  JACKSON,  U.  S.  GRANT 
BY  ALMA  HOLMAN  BURTON 
Author  of  "The  Story  of  Our  Country,"  etc. 
Cloth,  254  pages,     -  Price^  50  cents 

III-  FOUR  AMERICAN  NAVAL  HEROES 

PAUL  JONES,  OLIVER  H.  PERRY 
ADMIRAL  FARRAGUT,  ADMIRAL  DEWEY 
BY  MABEL  BORTON  BEEBE 
Cloth,  254  pages.      -  p^  5O  cents 

IV.     FOUR  AMERICAN  POETS 

WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT,  HENRY  WADSWORTH 
LONGFELLOW,  JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 
OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

BY  SHERWIN  CODY 
Cloth,  254  pages,     -  Price,  50  cents 

OTHER   VOLUMES   IN    PRAPARATION 


COPYRIGHT,  1899,  BY  WERNER  SCHOOL  BOOK  COMPANY. 


CONTENTS 

THE  STORY  OF  WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  THE  LOVE  OF  NATURE      .         .         .         .         .       9 

II.  BRYANT'S  CHILDHOOD  .         .         .         .  .  ,    .          14 

III.  WHAT  THE  BOYS  DID  WHEN  BRYANT  WAS  YOUNG     19 

IV.  THE  YOUNG  POET  ' 23 

V.  THANATOPSIS .28 

VI.  BRYANT  BECOMES  A  LAWYER    .          .         .  -33 

VII.  A  LITERARY  ADVENTURER    ....  37 

VIII.  THE  EDITOR  OF  A  GREAT  NEWSPAPER        .  .     40 

IX.  How  BRYANT  BECAME  RICH           ...  46 

X.  BRYANT  AS  AN  ORATOR  AND  PROSE  WRITER  .     49 

XI.  OTHER  EVENTS  IN  BRYANT'S    LIFE          .          .       54 

XII.  HONORS  TO  THE  GREAT  POET    .         .         .  .61 

XIII.  LEARNING  TO  LOVE  A  POET            ...  65 


THE  STORY  OF   HENRY  W.  LONGFELLOW 

I.     A  GREAT  POET 71 

II.     LONGFELLOW'S  ANCESTORS  .         .         .  73 

III.     LONGFELLOW'S  BOYHOOD          .         .         .         .76 


PAGE 


4  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

IV.  SOMETHING    ABOUT    THE   TIMES    WHEN    LONG 
FELLOW  WAS  YOUNG            ...              82 

V.     COLLEGE  DAYS 86 

VI.  THE  YOUNG  PROFESSOR            .         .         .         .91 

VII.  THE  "BEING  BEAUTEOUS"         .         ...           95 

VIII.  THE  CRAIGIE   HOUSE        ....               98 

IX.  THE  FIVE  OF  CLUBS    ....         .          .         103 

X.  LONGFELLOW  BECOMES  A  FAMOUS  POET           .    106 

XI.  How  SOME  OF  THE  GREAT  POEMS  WERE  WRITTEN  1 1 1 

XII.  THE  POET'S  SECOND  MARRIAGE       .,  '     -.         .    u7 

XIII.  EVANGELINE,    HlAWATHA,    AND  THE    COURTSHIP 

OF  MILES  STANDISH        .          .         9         .         I22 

XIV.  THE  GOOD  OLD  MAN  .    I2S 


THE  STORY  OF  JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 

I.  THE  QUAKER  OF  THE  OLDEN  TIME    .         .  .    133 

II.  A  FARMER'S  BOY          .          .                   .         .  ^8 

III.  WHITTIER'S  FAMILY          .         .         ,    .      .  ,  .144 

IV.  STORIES  OF  THE  POET'S  CHILDHOOD      .         .  148 
V.  SCHOOL  DAYS  .          .        ,..         .         ...  -151 

VI.  HAVERHILL  ACADEMY           .         .         .         .  157 

VII.  THE  FRIENDSHIP  OF  GOOD  WOMEN    .  .    161 


CONTENTS  5 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VIII.     POLITICAL  AMBITION    .....         166 

IX.      THE  GREAT  QUESTION  OF  SLAVERY  .          .171 

X.      How  WHITTIER  WAS  MOBBED        .  .          .         175 

XI.     SOME  OF  WHITTIER'S  FAMOUS  POEMS  .          .182 

£11.     THE  END  OF  A  SUCCESSFUL  LIFE  .  .          .         187 


THE  STORY  OF  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

I.  THE  TRUE  HUMORIST      .....    195 

II.  THE  BIRTH  OF  OLIVER   HOLMES           .          .        198 

III.  AN  AMERICAN   ARISTOCRAT     ....    202 

IV.  CAMBRIDGE 207 

V.     SCHOOL  LIFE 213 

VI.      COLLEGE  LIFE 218 

VII.     A  BUDDING  POET 223 

VIII.     DOCTOR  HOLMES 228 

IX.      THE    AUTOCRAT 235 

X.  "THE  FAMOUS  CLASS  OF  '29"    .         .          .        242 

XL  A  FEW  STRAY  FACTS      .         '.         .          .          .247 

XII.     THE  END  COMES 252 


THE  STORY  OF 

WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 


BRYANT 


CHAPTER   I 

THE    LOVE    OF    NATURE 

Do'  you  know  what  is  meant  by  "the  love  of 
Nature"?  Yes?  But  are  you  quite  sure?  Think 
a  little.  It  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  understand,  and 
many  older  people  than  you  do  not  know  what  it 
means. 

Bryant  was  the  great  American  poet  of  Nature. 
His   poetry   is  best  understood    and    enjoyed   by 
those  who  have  first   learned  to    love    Nature    as 
he  loved  her.      To  all  such  it  appears  to  be  very 
simple  and  grand. 

In  order  that  we  may  come  by  easy  steps  to  a 
true  appreciation  of  Bryant's  poetry,  let  us  take  a 
lesson  in  the  love  of  Nature. 

1 '  Man  made  the  city,  God  made  the  country, " 


IO 

•  *  • 

i^dic  ,old  saying.  Look  at  the  long  rows  of  city 
houses:  how  ugly  they  are!  How  dirty  are  the 
streets,  from  which  on  windy  days  clouds  of  dust 
sometimes  rise  and  almost  choke  you  as  you  walk 
along!  Even  the  sky  above  is  not  often  clear  and 
blue  as  it  ought  to  be,  but  it  seems  filthy  with 
smoke  and  soot.  And  what  sounds  you  hear! 
The  noise  of  the  cars  as  they  buzz  and  jar 
along  the  street,  the  monotonous  roar  of  human 
traffic,  and  the  rough  words  of  teamsters  and 
hackmen  as  they  try  to  crowd  by  one  another 
— all  these  grate  upon  the  sensitive  ear. 

How  different  is  everything  in  the  country! 
What  a  clear,  brilliant  blue  the  sky  is;  and  what  a 
vast  variety  of  color  the  surface  of  the  earth 
presents! 

Here  is  the  light,  fresh  green  of  the  grass, 
and  over  there  are  the  darker  greens  of  the 
pines  and  cedars.  In  the  autumn  we  observe 
the  gorgeous  hues  of  the  maples  and  the 
oaks  as  their  leaves  change  with  the  frost 
from  green  to  crimson  and  gold.  Think,  too,  of 
the  flowers!  Here  are  fields  white  with  daisies, 


II 

and  there  are  other  fields  filled  with  yellow  butter 
cups  or  red  clover  blossoms!  Farther  away  are 
fields  of  the  graceful,  slender-stalked  wheat,  or  of 
the  tall,  rustling  corn ! 

Have  you  ever  been  in  the  woods  in  June?  In 
stead  of  the  harsh  sounds  of  the  streets,  you 
hear  the  tumultuous  but  harmonious  songs  of 
birds  ;  instead  of  the  steady  roar  of  traffic, 
you  hear  the  deep  note  of  the  wind  through 
the  trees,  or  the  murmur  of  a  little  brook  flowing 
over  stones  or  dashing  down  a  waterfall.  All 
around  you  the  trees  rise,  like  columns  in  a  cathe 
dral,  but  more  beautiful  and  majestic;  and  the  air 
is  filled  with  a  sweet  scent  fit  to  be  used  for 
incense  in  the  churches. 

Now  read  what  Bryant  has  to  say  in  his  ' '  In 
scription  for  the  Entrance  to  a  Wood."  There  are 
many  hard  words  in  it,  and  you  must  read  very 
carefully  and  thoughtfully;  but  it  will  make  you 
feel  that  on  entering  such  a  wood  you  are  indeed 
going  into  God's  own  natural  church,  a  place  even 
more  magnificent  and  wonderful  than  Solomon's 
temple: 


12 

Stranger,  if  them  hast  learned  a  truth  which  needs 

No  school  of  long  experience,  that  the  world 

Is  full  of  guilt  and  misery,  and  hast  seen 

Enough  of  all  its  sorrows,  crimes,  and  cares 

To  tire  thee  of  it,  enter  this  wild  wood 

And  view  the  haunts  of  Nature.     The  calm  shade 

.Shall  bring  a  kindred  calm,  and  the  sweet  breeze 

That  makes  the  green  leaves  dance,  shall  waft  a  balm 

To  thy  sick  heart.     Thou  wilt  find  nothing  here 

Of  all  that  pained  thee  in  the  haunts  of  men, 

And  made  thee  loathe  thy  life.     The  primal  curse 

Fell,  it  is  true,  upon  the  unsinning  earth, 

But  not  in  vengeance.     God  hath  yoked  to  guilt 

Her  pale  tormentor,  misery.     Hence   these  shades 

Are  still  the  abodes  of  gladness ;  the  thick  roof 

Of  green  and  stirring  branches  is  alive 

And  musical  with  birds,  that  sing  and  sport 

In  wantonness  of  spirit ;  while  below 

The  squirrel,  with  raised  paws  and  form  erect, 

Chirps  merrily.     Throngs  of  insects  in  the  shade 

Try  their  thin  wings  and  dance  in  the  warm  beam 

That  waked  them  into  life.     Even  the  green  trees 

Partake  the  deep  contentment ;  as  they  bend 

To  the  soft  winds,  the  sun  from  the  blue  sky 

Looks  in  and  sheds  a  blessing  on  the  scene. 

Scarce  less  the  cleft-born  wild-flower  seems  to  enjoy 


13 

Existence,  than  the  winged  plunderer 

That  sucks  its  sweets.     The  mossy  rocks  themselves, 

And  the  old  and  ponderous  trunks  of  prostrate  trees 

That  lead  from  knoll  to  knoll  a  causey  rude 

Or  bridge  the  sunken  brook,  and  their  dark  roots, 

With  all  their  earth  upon  them,  twisting  high, 

Breathe  fixed  tranquillity.     The  rivulet 

Sends  forth  glad  sounds,  and  tripping  o'er  its  bed 

Of  pebbly  sands,  or  leaping  down  the  rocks, 

Seems,  with  continuous  laughter,  to  rejoice 

In  its  own  being.     Softly  tread  the  marge, 

Lest  from  her  midway  perch  thou  scare  the  wren 

That  dips  her  bill  in  water.     The  cool  wind 

That  stirs  the  stream  in  play,  shall  come  to  thee, 

Like  one  that  loves  thee,  nor  let  thee  pass 

Ungreeted,  and  shall  give  its  light  embrace.* 

This  is  one  of  the  hardest  things  in  Bryant's 
poetry.  When  you  can  see  all  its  beauties,  and 
take  pleasure  in  reading  it,  you  will  have  learned 
to  love  both  Nature  and  Nature's  poet-priest. 


*To  help  in  the  mastery  of  this  poem,  the  student  is  advised  to  make 
a  careful  list  of  all  the  natural  objects  mentioned  in  it,  such  as  birds, 
brooks,  trees,  and  flowers,  and  try  to  recollect  having  seen  something 
of  the  same  sort. 


CHAPTER  II 

BRYANT'S  CHILDHOOD 

Bryant  was  the  first  great  American  poet,  having 
been  born  fourteen  years  before  Longfellow.  Like 
Longfellow,  he  could  trace  his  descent  (on  his 
mother's  side)  from  John  Alden  and  Priscilla  Mul 
lens,  who  came  over  in  the  Mayflower;  and  through 
two  other  branches  he  was  descended  from  Pilgrim 
stock.  The  first  Bryant  in  America  did  not  come 
in  the  Mayflower,  but  he  was  in  Plymouth  in  1632, 
and  was  chosen  town  constable  in  1663. 

The  poet's  father  and  grandfather  were  both 
doctors;  so  when  Dr.  Peter  Bryant  was  married  to 
* '  sweet  Sallie  Snell, "  as  the  poet  has  it,  and  their 
second  child  was  born,  the  good  doctor  named 
him  William  Cullen,  after  a  great  medical  authority 
who  had  died  four  years  before.  This  happy 
event — that  is,  the  birth  of  William  Cullen  Bryant 
—occurred  November  3,  1794,  in  the  small  town 
of  Cummington,  Massachusetts.  But  instead  of 
growing  up  to  be  a  doctor  the  boy  became  a  poet, 
and  his  father  was  rather  proud  of  the  fact,  too. 


15 

Cummington  is  a  small  town  among  the  Berk 
shire  hills,  in  the  western  part  of  Massachusetts. 
The  country  around  it  is  mountainous,  with  wide 
valleys  which  in  the  early  days  were  very  fertile. 
Bryant's  grandfather,  Snell,  had  come  here  in 
1774,  just  before  the  Revolution,  with  a  handful  of 
other  settlers,  to  take  up  a  homestead.  There  is  a 
story  that  Eben  Snell,  Jr. ,  an  uncle  of  the  poet, 
while  working  in  the  cornfield  put  his  ear  to  the 
ground  and  heard  the  sounds  of  the  distant  battle 
of  Bunker  Hill. 

Little  William  Cullen  was  very  quick  and 
bright,  though  puny.  In  his  autobiography  he 
says  he  could  go  alone  when  he  was  but  a  year 
old,  and  knew  all  the  letters  of  the  alphabet 
four  months  later.  His  older  brother,  Austin,  did 
even  better  than  this,  however;  for  he  began  to 
read  the  Bible  before  he  was  three  years  old,  and 
in  just  about  a  year  from  the  time  he  began,  he  had 
read  it  all  through,  from  Genesis  to  Revelation. 
William  Cullen  as  a  small  child  learned  many  of 
Watts's  hymns,  and  used  to  recite  them  as  he 
stood  by  his  mother's  knee. 


i6 

It  is  probable  that  so  much  study  was  not  good 
for  him,  for  he  suffered  from  terrible  headaches, 
and  was  so  puny  his  father  and  mother  thought 
he  would  not  live  long.  His  head  seemed  to 
be  too  big  for  his  body.  There  is  a  story  that 
some  medical  students,  who  were  studying  in 
Dr.  Bryant's  office  when  William  was  a  child, 
were  ordered  to  give  him  a  cold  bath  every  morn 
ing  in  a  spring  near  the  house.  They  kept  this 
up  so  late  in  the  fall  that  they  had  to  break  the 
first  skim  of  ice  on  the  top  of  the  water.  The 
treatment  cured  him,  and  after  he  was  fourteen, 
he  says,  he  never  had  a  headache  in  his  life. 

He  began  to  go  to  school  before  he  was  four  years 
old.  It  was  not  unnatural  that  a  little  fellow  of 
that  age  should  get  sleepy  during  school  hours. 
One  day  he  woke  from  a  sound  nap  to  find  him 
self  in  his  teacher's  lap.  When  he  realized  where 
he  was  he  became  furiously  angry  at  the  thought 
that  he  should  be  treated  so  like  a  baby. 

About  this  time,  too,  he  was  kicked  by  a  horse. 
A  lady  had  come  to  call  on  his  mother,  and  had 
tied  her  horse  to  a  tree  near  the  door.  There  were 


fresh  chips  scattered  about,  and  William  and  his 
elder  brother  amused  themselves  by  throwing  them 
at  the  horse's  heels  to  make  him  caper.  William 
got  too  near  and  at  last  the  horse  kicked  him  over. 
He  soon  recovered,  and  went  to  school  with  a 
bandaged  head,  but  a  scar  from  the  wound  on  his 
head  he  carried  to  the  day  of  his  death. 

When  he  was  five  years  old,  the  family  went  to 
live  on  Grandfather  Snell's  old  homestead,  where 
Dr.  Peter  Bryant  remained  as  long  as  he  lived. 
Years  afterward,  when  the  poet  became  rich,  he 
bought  this  place  for  a  country  home. 

He  began  now  to  go  regularly  to  the  district 
school,  where  he  learned  reading,  writing,  and 
arithmetic,  a  little  grammar  and  geography,  and 
the  Westminster  Catechism.  He  was  a  fine 
speller,  seldom  missing  a  word,  and  he  got  on  well 
in  geography.  The  catechism,  however,  did  not 
interest  him  and  he  could  not  understand  it. 

Those  were  very  strict  Puritanic  days.  Says 
Bryant,  in  his  autobiography:  "  One  of  the  means 
of  keeping  boys  in  order  was  a  little  bundle  of 
birchen  rods,  bound  together  with  a  small  cord, 


i8 

and  generally  suspended  on  a  nail  against  the 
kitchen  wall.  This  was  esteemed  as  much  a  part 
of  the  necessary  furniture  as  the  crane  that  hun* 

o 

in  the  kitchen  fireplace,  or  the  shovel  and  tongs. " 
And  he  tells  us  that  sometimes  the  boy  was  sent 
out  to  cut  the  twigs  with  which  he  himself  was  to 
be  whipped. 

Not  only  was  whipping  thought  to  be  good  for 
boys,  but  even  grown-up  people  were  whipped  in 
public  for  petty  crimes. 

About  a  mile  from  the  Bryant  home  was  a 
public  whipping-post.  Says  the  poet:  ' 'I  remember 
seeing  a  young  fellow,  of  about  eighteen  years  of 
age,  upon  whose  back,  by  direction  of  a  justice  of 
the  peace,  forty  lashes  had  just  been  laid,  as  the 
punishment  for  a  theft  which  he  had  committed. 
His  eyes  were  red,  like  those  of  one  who  had  been 
crying,  and  I  well  remember  the  feeling  of  curios 
ity,  mingled  with  pity  and  fear,  with  which  I  gazed 
on  him." 

This  was  the  last  time  the  whipping-post  was 
used  in  that  neighborhood,  but  it  stood  there  for 
several  years  longer. 


19 
CHAPTER    III 

WHAT   THE    BOYS    DID    WHEN    BRYANT    WAS    YOUNG 

Life  in  the  time  of  Bryant's  boyhood  was  rather 
hard  and  rough.  New  England  country  life  was 
never  easy.  The  chairs  were  very  straight-backed, 
the  beds  were  hard,  and  the  food  was  not  very 
delicate,  though  there  was  always  plenty  of  it — 
plenty  of  pork  and  beans,  if  nothing  else.  For  all 
that,  the  boys  in  Bryant's  day  had  a  very  good 
time,  which  he  tells  about  in  the  account  of  his 
early  life  to  which  we  have  already  referred. 

Among  the  pleasant  occurrences  of  those  old- 
fashioned  times  were  the  neighborhood  ( '  raisings. " 
When  a  man  intended  to  build  a  house  he  got 
all  the  big,  heavy  timbers  together  for  the  frame, 
and  then  called  in  the  neighbors  to  help  him  put 
them  up.  The  minister  always  made  a  point  of 
being  present;  and  the  young  men  thought  it  great 
sport,  as  did  the  boys,  who  could  only  look  on.  ' '  It 
was  a  spectacle  for  us, "  says  Bryant,  ''next  to  that 
of  a  performer  on  the  tight-rope,  to  see  the  young 
men  walk  steadily  on  the  narrow  footing  of  the 


20 


beams  at  a  great  height  from  the  ground,  or  as 
they  stood  to  catch  in  their  hands  the  wooden  pins 
and  the  braces  flung  to  them  from  below.  Each 
tried  to  outdo  the  other  in  daring,  and  when  the 
frame  was  all  up,  one  of  them  would  usually  cap  the 
climax  by  standing  on  his  head  on  the  ridge-pole. " 

Another  good  time  was  had  at  the  maple  sugar 
frolic.  In  spring,  when  the  sap  begins  to  come 
up  in  the  maple  trees,  men  go  about,  and  bore  two 
or  three  holes  in  every  maple  tree  in  a  sugar 
camp.  In  these  they  stick  little  spigots  with  holes 
through  them,  and  underneath  they  set  a  pail  to 
catch  the  sap.  Soon  it  begins  to  drop.  When  the 
pails  are  filled,  the  men  bring  fresh  ones,  and  carry 
off  the  sap  to  an  enormous  iron  kettle  hung  on  a 
pole  over  a  hot  fire. 

"From  my  father's  door,"  says  Bryant,  "in  the 
latter  part  of  March  and  the  early  part  of  April, 
we  could  see  a  dozen  columns  of  smoke  rising  over 
the  woods  in  different  places,  where  the  work  was 
going  on.  After  the  sap  had  been  collected  and 
boiled  for  three  or  four  days,  the  time  came  when 
the  thickening  liquid  was  made  to  pass  into  the 


21 


form  of  sugar.  This  was  when  the  syrup  had  be 
come  of  such  a  consistency  that  it  would  feather — 
that  is  to  say,  when  a  beechen  twig,  formed  at  the 
small  end  into  a  little  loop,  dipped  into  the  hot 
syrup  and  blown  upon  by  the  breath,  sent  into  the 
air  a  light,  feathery  film."  The  syrup  was  then 
lifted  off  and  poured  into  moulds,  or  else  stirred 
rapidly  until  cooled,  when  it  became  delicious  brown 
sugar  in  loose  grains.  The  boys  had  a  great  deal 
of  fun  "  trying"  the  syrup  to  see  if  it  was  ready  to 
" sugar  off." 

Then  there  were  husking-bees  and  apple-parings 
and  cider-making  ;  and  in  the  winter  all  the  young 
people  went  to  singing  school. 

Bryant  in  his  boyhood  was  also  fond  of  fishing 
for  trout  in  the  small  streams,  where  there  were 
plenty  of  fish  to  catch.  Another  sport  was  squirrel 
shooting.  The  young  men  would  divide  into  two 
equal  parties  and  see  which  party  could  shoot  the 
most  squirrels. 

Of  course,  in  those  days  everybody  went  to 
church.  Young  Bryant  began  when  he  was  only 
three  years  old.  History  does  not  say  how  he 


22 


behaved,  but  there  was  not  much  chance  to  be 
naughty  in  church  in  those  times.  Every  parish 
had  its  tithing  man,  whose  business  it  was  to 
maintain  order  in  the  church  during  divine  serv 
ice,  and  who  sat  with  a  stern  countenance  through 
the  sermon,  keeping  a  vigilant  eye  on  the  boys  in 
distant  pews  and  in  the  galleries.  Sometimes 
when  he  detected  two  of  them  communicating 
with  each  other,  he  went  to  one  of  them,  took  him 
by  the  arm,  and  leading  him  away,  seated  him 
beside  himself.  He  was  also  directed  by  law  to  see 
that  the  Sabbath  was  not  profaned  by  people 
wandering  in  the  fields  or  fishing  in  the  brooks. 

When  he  was  eight  years  old,  young  Cullen 
began  to  make  poetry.  His  grandfather  thought 
him  rather  bright  at  this,  and  a  year  or  two  later 
asked  him  to  turn  the  first  chapter  of  the  Book 
of  Job  into  verse.  He  did  it  all.  Here  are  two 
sample  lines : 

His  name  was  Job,  evil  he  did  eschew. 

To  him  were  born  seven  sons ;  three  daughters,  too. 

For  this  he  received  a  ninepenny  piece,  though 
his  father  thought  the  lines  rather  bad. 


23 

CHAPTER   IV 

THE    YOUNG   POET 

Bryant's  poetic  career  began  when  he  was  twelve 
years  old.  Besides  some  " Enigmas"  and  a  trans 
lation  from  the  Latin  of  Horace,  he  made  a  copy 
of  verses  to  be  recited  at  the  close  of  the  winter 
school,  "in  the  presence  of  the  master,  the  minis 
ter  of  the  parish,  and  a  number  of  private  gentle 
men.  "  The  verses  were  printed  in  the  Hamp 
shire  Gazette,  March  18,  1806,  the  year  before 
Longfellow  was  born.  This  same  newspaper 
had  other  contributions  also  from  the  pen  of 
"C  B." 

Dr.  Peter  Bryant  was  something  of  a  politician. 
He  was  several  times  a  representative  in  the 
Massachusetts  legislature,  and  finally  a  senator. 
He  belonged  to  the  Federal  party,  which  was  then 
in  opposition  to  the  president.  Jefferson  was  pres 
ident,  and  in  1807,  for  the  purpose  of  protecting 
American  interests,  he  laid  an  embargo  on  ship 
ping.  This  brought  on  severe  hard  times,  and 
caused  great  indignation  among  the  Federalists. 


24 

Dr.  Bryant  thought  his  young  son  might  write  a 
satirical  poem  about  it.  So  ' '  The  Embargo  ;  or, 
Sketches  of  the  Times,"  was  written  and  printed 
in  a  volume.  There  was  a  line  on  the  title  page 
saying  the  poem  was  written  by  * '  a  youth  of  thir 
teen."  One  of  the  great  periodicals  of  that  time, 
called  the  Anthology,  reviewed  the  book,  and  while 
speaking  well  of  it,  said  it  seemed  impossible  that 
such  a  poem  had  been  written  by  a  "  youth  of 
thirteen."  So  when  the  first  edition  was  sold  and 
a  second  was  printed  the  following  year,  young 
Bryant's  friends  prefixed  an  ( *  Advertisement, "  as 
they  called  it — a  paragraph  in  which  they  assured 
the  public  that  the  author  was  only  thirteen,  and 
there  were  plenty  of  people  who  would  vouch  for 
it.  In  this  edition  the  name  William  Cullen 
Bryant  was  boldly  printed. 

Of  course  this  was  not  very  good  poetry.  There 
is  a  story  that  years  afterward  some  one  asked 
Bryant  if  he  had  a  copy  of  his  first  book,  ' '  The 
Embargo. "  '  *  No, "  said  he.  Afterward  the  friend 
who  had  asked  him  said  he  had  found  a  copy  in 
Boston.  "I  don't  see  how  you  can  spend  your 


25 

time  with  such  rubbish, "  said  the  poet,  and  turned 
away. 

During  the  next  few  years  he  wrote  other  boyish 
and  patriotic  poems,  some  of  which  were  printed 
in  the  Hampshire  Gazette.  One,  written  when  he 
was  sixteen,  was  entitled  * '  The  Genius  of  Colum 
bia";  another  was,  "An  Ode  for  the  Fourth  of 
July,  1812." 

In  1812  he  entered  the  Sophomore  Class  in 
Williams  College,  where  he  remained  only  a  year. 
There  were  only  the  president,  one  professor,  and 
two  tutors  at  Williams  College  in  those  days,  and 
so  Bryant's  room-mate  decided  to  go  to  Yale, 
where  he  could  get  a  better  education.  Bryant 
thought  he  would  go,  too.  He  left  Williams 
College  and  went  home  to  prepare  himself  to  pass 
the  examinations  for  entrance  to  the  Junior  Class 
in  Yale. 

During  this  summer,  while  he  was  studying  at 
home,  he  often  wandered  about  in  the  woods;  and 
here  he  wrote  ' '  Thanatopsis. "  At  this  time 
Bryant  was  a  very  meditative  young  man,  fond  of 
reading  poetry,  a  fair  Greek  and  Latin  scholar, 


26 


and   devotedly  fond   of   the   country  and    all    its 
beauties. 

Just  how  or  when  he  wrote  "Thanatopsis" 
nobody  ever  knew.  In  the  autumn  his  father 
decided  that  he  could  not  afford  to  send  him  to 
Yale,  as  he  was  poor  and  had  a  large  family.  So 
the  young  man  went  away  to  study  law.  After  he 
was  gone,  Dr.  Bryant  was  looking  over  some 
papers  in  his  desk,  and  found  in  one  of  the  pigeon 
holes  some  poems  which  his  son  Cullen  had  writ 
ten.  One  of  them  was  "  Thanatopsis. "  He  read 
it  over,  and  thought  it  so  good  that  he  took  it  to  a 
lady  friend  of  his. 

"Here  are  some  poems,  "said  he,  "  which  our 
Cullen  has  been  writing." 

She  took  them  and  began  to  read.  When  she 
had  finished  "Thanatopsis"  she  burst  into  tears; 
and  Dr.  Bryant  found  his  eyes  rather  watery,  too. 

At  that  time  Dr.  Bryant  was  a  member  of  the 
senate  in  the  Massachusetts  legislature  ;  and  so, 
going  up  to  Boston,  he  took  this  and  some  other 
poems  along.  The  North  American  Review  was 
the  great  magazine  in  those  days,  and  Dr.  Bryant 


27 

knew  slightly  one  of  the  editors,  whose  name  was 
Phillips.  He  went  to  call  on  him,  but  not  finding 
him  at  home  left  the  package  of  manuscript  with 
his  own  name  on  it.  When  Mr  Phillips  came 
home  he  found  it,  and  after  reading  the  poems 
concluded  that  Dr.  Bryant  must  have  written 
' '  Thanatopsis, "  while  the  other  poems  were  by  his 
son  Cullen.  But  he  regarded  this  poem  as  such  a 
find  that  he  hurried  over  to  Cambridge  to  see  his 
two  fellow-editors  and  read  them  the  wonderful 
lines.  When  he  had  finished,  one  of  them,  Richard 
H.  Dana,  himself  a  poet,  said  : 

"Oh,  Phillips,  you  have  been  imposed  on. 
There  is  no  one  in  America  who  can  write  such 
a  poem  as  that. " 

"Ah,  but  I  know  the  man  who  wrote  it, "  said 
Phillips.  "  He  is  in  the  senate." 

"Well,  I  must  have  a  look  at  the  man  who 
wrote  that  poem,"  said  Dana;  and  off  he  posted  to 
Boston.  He  went  to  the  state  house,  and  to  the 
senate  chamber,  and  asked  for  Senator  Bryant. 
A  tall,  gray-bearded  old  man  was  pointed  out 
to  him.  Dana  looked  at  him  for  a  few  minutes 


28 

and  said  to  himself:  "He  has  a  fine  head;  but 
that  man  never  wrote  '  Thanatopsis. ' '  So  without 
speaking  to  him  he  returned  to  Cambridge. 

The  poem  was  printed  in  the  North  American 
Review.  It  was  the  -first  great  poem  ever  pro 
duced  in  America  ;  it  was  the  work  of  a  young 
man  not  eighteen  years  of  age,  and  it  has  since 
been  said  to  be  the  greatest  poem  ever  written  by 
one  so  young. 


CHAPTER  V 

THANATOPSIS 

Every  child  at  school  becomes  familiar  with  this 
grand  poem,  because  it  is  in  many  of  the  higher 
readers.  But  that  is  not  enough.  You  should 
learn  to  understand  its  meaning.  As  you  read 
this  poem,  are  you  not  reminded  of  the  deep  notes 
of  a  church  organ,  as  the  organist,  left  alone, 
plays  some  mighty  fugue  in  preparation  for  the 
funeral  of  a  great  man?  Thanatopsis  (made  up 
from  two  Greek  words)  means  a  view  of  death. 
The  poem  opens  by  calling  to  our  minds  the 


29 

grandeurs  and  the  beauty  of  a  cathedral-like 
wood,  where  Nature  rules  supreme. 

To  him  who  in  the  love  of  Nature  holds 
Communion  with  her  visible  forms,  she  speaks 
A  various  language ;  for  his  gayer  hours  she 
Has  a  voice  of  gladness,  and  a  smile 
And  eloquence  of  beauty,  and  she  glides 
Into  his  darker  musings  with  a  mild 
And  healing  sympathy,  that  steals  away 
Their  sharpness  ere  he  is  aware. 

We  should  hardly  expect  a  young  man  of  seven 
teen  to  be  meditating  on  death;  but  even  very 
young  people  often  think  about  it. 

When  thoughts 

Of  the  last  bitter  hour  come  like  a  blight 
Over  thy  spirit,  and  sad  images 
Of  the  stern  agony,  and  shroud,  and  pall, 
And  breathless  darkness,  and  the  narrow  house, 
Make  thee  to  shudder  and  grow  sick  at  heart — 

These  are  the  things  we  all  think  of  when  father 
or  mother  or  brother  or  sister  or  young  friend  dies 
and  is  laid  away  in  the  earth.  It  is  sad  and  ter 
rible,  and  we  cannot  help  weeping.  At  those  times 


30 

strong  men  and  women  shed  tears,  and  we  do  not 
think  it  strange.      But,  says  Bryant, — 

Go  forth  under  the  open  sky  and  list 

To  Nature's  teachings,  while  from  all  around — 

Earth  and  her  waters,  and  the  depths  of  air — 

Comes  a  still  voice:  Yet  a  few  days,  and  thee 

The  all-beholding  sun  shall  see  no  more 

In  all  his  course ;  nor  yet  in  the  cold  ground, 

Where  thy  pale  form  was  laid,  with  many  tears, 

Nor  in  the  embrace  of  ocean,    shall  exist 

Thy  image.     Earth,  that  nourished  thee,  shall  claim 

Thy  growth,  to  be  resolved  to  earth  again ; 

And,  lost  each  human  trace,  surrendering  up 

Thine  individual  being,  shalt  thou  go 

To  mix  forever  with  the  elements, 

To  be  a  brother  to  the  insensible  rock 

And  to  the  sluggish  clod,  which  the  rude  swain 

Turns  with  his  share,  and  treads  upon.     The  oak 

Shall  send  his  roots  abroad  and  pierce  thy  mould. 

Yet  not  to  thine  eternal  resting-place 
Shalt  thou  retire  alone,  nor  couldst  thou  wish 
Couch  more  magnificent.     Thou  shalt  lie  down 
With  patriarchs  of  the  infant  world — with  kings, 
The  powerful  of  the  earth — the  wise,  the  good, 
Fair  forms,  and  hoary  seers  of  ages  past, 
All  in  one  mighty  sepulchre. 


Being  turned  back  to  earth  again  does  not  seem 
so  terrible  when  we  think  that  all  must  have  the 
same  fate.  There  is  a  suggestion  of  grandeur 
in  the  thought  that  George  Washington,  King 
Solomon,  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  Napoleon — all  lie  in 
the  same  bed  which  Nature,  the  all-ruling,  ever 
lasting  power,  has  provided. 

The  hills, 

Rock-ribbed  and  ancient  as  the  sun, — the  vales, 
Stretching  in  pensive  quietness  between ; 
The  venerable  woods, — rivers  that  move 
In  majesty,  and  the  complaining  brooks 
That  make  the  meadows  green ;  and,  poured  round  all. 
Old  Ocean's  gray  and  melancholy  waste, — 
Are  but  the  solemn  decorations  all 
Of  the  great  tomb  of  man. 

When  we  reflect  on  how  many  have  lived  and 
died,  the  earth  seems  but  one  great  tomb.  There 
are  said  to  be  over  1,200,000,000  persons  on  the 
earth  to-day.  In  a  few  years  they  will  all  have 
passed  away,  and  others  will  have  taken  their 
places;  and  this  change  has  been  going  on  for  thou 
sands  and  thousands  of  years.  In  the  graveyards 


32 

of  any  city  will  be  found  but  a  few  hundred  or  at 
most  a  few  thousand  graves;  yet  hundreds  of  thou 
sands  of  people  have  died  there  and  been  buried. 
Where  are  their  graves?  Lost  and  forgotten. 

All  that  tread 

The  globe  are  but  a  handful  to  the  tribes 
That  slumber  in  its  bosom. — Take  the  wings 
Of  morning,  pierce  the  Barcan  wilderness, 
Or  lose  thyself  in  the  continuous  woods 
Where  rolls  the  Oregon,  and  hears  no  sound 
Save  his  own  dashings — yet  the  dead  are  there: 
And  millions  in  those  solitudes,  since  first 
The  flight  of  years  began,  have  laid  them  down 
In  their  last  sleep — the  dead  reign  there  alone. 
So  shalt  thou  rest ;  and  what  if  thou  withdraw 
In  silence  from  the  living,  and  no  friend 
Take  note  of  thy  departure?     All  that  breathe 
Will  share  thy  destiny.     The  gay  will  laugh 
When  thou  art  gone,  the  solemn  brood  of  care 
Plod  on,  and  each  one  as  before  will  chase 
His  favorite  phantom;  yet  all  these  shall  leave 
Their  mirth  and  their  employments,  and  shall  come 
And  make  their  bed  with  thee.     As  the  long  train 
Of  ages  glides  away,  the  sons  of  men, 
The  youth  in  life's  green  spring,  and  he  who  goes 
In  the  full  strength  of  years,  matron  and  maidt 


33 

The  speechless  babe,  and  the  grey-headed  man- 
Shall  one  by  one  be  gathered  to  thy  side, 
By  those  who  in  their  turn  shall  follow  them. 

So  live  that  when  thy  summons  comes  to  join 
The  innumerable  caravan,  which  moves 
To  that  mysterious  realm  where  each  shall  take 
His  chamber  in  the  silent  halls  of  death, 
Thou  go  not,  like  the  quarry-slave  at  night, 
Scourged  to  his  dungeon,  but  .sustained  and  soothed 
By  an  unfaltering  trust,  approach  thy  grave 
Like  one  who  wraps  the  drapery  of  his  couch 
About  him,  and  lies  down  to  pleasant  dreams. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BRYANT    BECOMES    A    LAWYER 

Always  of  a  studious  turn,  always  reading  in 
his  father's  well-stocked  library,  or  wandering 
through  the  woods  and  writing  poetry,  Bryant  nat 
urally  tended  towards  some  learned  profession. 
He  did  not  care  to  be  a  doctor;  he  would  have 
liked  to  be  a  literary  man,  if  such  a  career  had 
then  existed  or  been  dreamed  possible.  As  it  was 
not,  he  finally  decided  to  become  a  lawyer. 


34 

A  classmate  who  remembers  him  at  this  time 
describes  him  as  singularly  handsome  and  finely 
formed.  He  was  tall  and  slender,  and  had  a  pro 
lific  growth  of  dark  brown  hair.  He  was  also 
quick  and  dextrous  in  his  movements,  so  much 
so  that  his  younger  brother  sometimes  boasted 
about  his  ' '  stout  brother, "  though  he  afterward 
learned  that  his  strength  was  not  so  remarkable  as 
his  skill  and  alertness  in  the  use  of  it. 

When  his  father's  poverty  compelled  him  to 
abandon  college,  he  entered  the  law  office  of  a  Mr. 
Howe,  of  Worthington,  a  quiet  little  village  four 
or  five  miles  from  Cummington. 

Bryant's  friend  and  biographer,  John  Bigelow, 
says :  ' '  A  young  man's  first  year's  study  of  the 
law  commonly  affects  him  like  his  first  cigar  or 
his  first  experience  'before  the  mast."  In  other 
words,  Bryant  didn't  like  it  at  all.  He  was  a  con 
scientious  young  man,  and  kept  at  the  work;  but 
he  felt  that  he  would  almost  as  soon  go  out  as  a 
day  laborer.  In  a  letter  he  speaks  of  Worthington 
as  consisting  of  ' '  a  blacksmith  shop  and  a  cow 
stable, "  where  his  only  entertainment  was  reading 


35 

Irving's  '  '  Knickerbocker. "  Mr.  Howe  complained 
that  he  gave  more  time  to  Wordsworth's  lyrical  bal 
lads  than  to  Blackstone  and  Chitty,  the  great 
authorities  on  law,  which  he  should  have  been 
studying. 

Young  Bryant  wanted  to  go  to  Boston  to  con 
tinue  his  studies;  but  finally,  as  his  father  was  too 
poor  to  support  him  in  Boston,  he  went  to  Bridge- 
water,  where  his  grandfather,  Dr.  Philip  Bryant, 
lived.  He  liked  this  place  better.  He  was  poet  for 
a  Fourth  of  July  celebration,  and  became  inter 
ested  in  politics.  The  War  of  1812  was  going  on. 
Madison  was  President,  and  Bryant,  in  his  letters 
to  his  friends,  speaks  of  him  as  "His  Imbecility." 
' '  His  Imbecility  "  was  warned  that  if  he  imposed 
any  more  taxes  the  people  would  revolt. 

At  one  time,  Bryant  thought  of  entering  the 
militia  for  the  defense  of  states'  rights.  It  seems 
that  he  then  advocated  the  policy  of  Massachu 
setts  seceding  from  the  Union,  as  the  Southern 
states  afterwards  did. 

His  father  actually  got  him  a  commission  as 
adjutant  in  the  Massachusetts  militia,  but  the  war 


36 

ended,  and  Bryant  kept  on  with  his  law  studies. 
That  same  year  he  came  of  age  and  was  admitted 
to  practice  at  the  bar. 

He  now  went  home  and  began  to  look  about 
for  a  place  where  he  could  begin  the  practice  of  law. 
He  decided  on  Plainfield,  a  small  village  four 
or  five  miles  from  Cummington.  Plainfield  had 
been  the  home  of  his  father  for  a  short  time  when 
the  future  poet  was  a  child  ;  but  it  was  a  very 
small  place,  with  not  more  than  two  hundred  inhab 
itants. 

He  drudged  here  for  a  few  months,  earning 
quite  a  little  money  ;  but  he  decided  that  the 
place  was  too  small,  and  went  to  Great  Barring- 
ton,  where  he  had  a  chance  to  go  into  partnership 
with  a  lawyer  already  established,  whose  practice 
was  worth  $1,200  a  year. 

Here  he  settled  down  to  hard  work,  and  here 
he  remained  as  long  as  he  continued  to  practice 
law.  After  the  success  of  ' '  Thanatopsis, "  he  con 
tributed  various  articles  to  the  North  American 
Review,  and  in  it  were  published  some  of  his  most 
famous  poems.  He  was  chosen  one  of  the  tithing 


37 

men  of  the  town,  and  soon  afterwards  town  clerk, 
an  office  he  held  for  five  years.  As  town  clerk  he 
received  a  salary  of  five  dollars  a  year.  The  gov 
ernor  of  Massachusetts  also  made  him  Justice  of 
the  Peace. 

When  Bryant  was  twenty-five  years  old  his  father 
died.  This  caused  him  great  grief  ;  but  about  this 
time,  great  happiness  came  to  him  also.  Soon 
after  going  to  Great  Barrington  he  had  become 
acquainted  with  a  Miss  Fairchild,  who  was  an 
orphan  visiting  in  the  neighborhood.  He  liked 
her,  and  the  year  after  his  father's  death  they  were 
married.  She  was  his  devoted  wife  and  friend 
for  forty-five  years,  until  she  died. 


CHAPTER  VII 

A    LITERARY   ADVENTURER 

Gradually  Bryant  had  become  known  in  the 
small  literary  circle  that  had  sprung  up  around 
the  North  American  Review,  though  his  name  was 
not  known  outside  this  small  circle  in  Boston.  He 


38 

had  a  great  desire  to  become  a  literary  man  ;  but 
he  knew  he  must  support  his  wife  and  family,  and 
verse-making  offered  no  money  return. 

His  friends,  Richard  H.  Dana,  Miss  Cathe 
rine  Sedgwick,  and  one  or  two  others,  tried  to 
persuade  him  to  go  to  New  York  and  engage  in 
literature.  Finally  he  made  a  visit  to  New  York. 
A  publishing  firm  there  offered  him  two  hundred 
dollars  a  year  to  write  one  hundred  lines  of  poetry 
a  month  for  them.  He  thought  this  might  keep 
him  from  starvation.  He  went  back  to  Great 
Barrington  and  stayed  for  some  time  longer,  con 
tributing  to  the  United  States  Literary  Gazette, 
for  which  Longfellow  was  then  writing. 

In  1825  he  visited  New  York  again,  and  was 
offered  the  editorship  of  a  monthly  periodical,  the 
New  York  Review  and  Athen&um  Magazine,  which 
some  publishers  were  proposing  to  start.  His  sal 
ary  was  to  be  one  thousand  dollars  a  year.  This 
offer  he  accepted,  and  he  went  to  New  York  to 
live,  leaving  his  wife  and  family  in  Great  Barring- 
ton  until  ( he  should  find  out  whether  he  was  going 
to  succeed.  He  considered  that  if  literature  failed, 


39 

he  could  drudge  at  the  law  in  New  York  as  well  as 
at  Great  Barrington. 

James  Fenimore  Cooper,  who  was  now  becom 
ing  a  famous  novelist,  was  a  friend  of  Bryant's. 
So  was  William  Ware,  who  wrote  a  novel  based 
on  the  life  of  Zenobia,  the  queen  of  Palmyra,  —  a 
very  famous  book  in  its  day  and  one  still  worth 
reading.  Bryant  worked  very  hard.  He  liked 
literature  a  great  deal  better  than  he  did  the  law  ; 
and  though  it  was  uncertain,  he  thought  that  for 
tune  would  favor  him  in  the  end.  The  magazine 
he  edited  did  not  succeed  very  well,  and  at  the 
end  of  a  year  was  united  with  another  one,  the 
New  York  Literary  Gazette.  A  few  months  later 
the  United  States  Gazette  in  Boston  was  united  with 
the  magazine  which  Bryant  was  editing,  under  the 
title,  United  States  Review  and  Literary  Gazette. 

Bryant  was  allowed  one  quarter  interest  in 
the  business  and  'five  hundred  dollars  a  year 
salary.  The  five  hundred  dollars  was  probably 
all  he  got,  and  this  sum  was  so  small  he  could 
not  make  it  support  his  family  very  well.  If 
this  magazine  should  succeed,  he  would  get  more 


40 

money;  but  it  did  not,  and  Bryant  really  thought 
he  would  have  to  quit  literature  for  law  once 
more. 

He  was  licensed  to  practice  in  New  York;  but 
just  then  fortune  favored  him  :  he  was  asked  to 
to  do  some  work  on  the  New  York  Evening  Post. 
The  assistant  editor  had  gone  to  Cuba,  and 
finally  died  there.  So  Bryant  was  soon  made  the 
assistant  editor,  and  was  allowed  an  interest  in  the 
paper. 

At  that  time  the  paper  was  favorable  to  the 
federal  party;  but  a  few  years  later  it  became 
decidedly  democratic  in  tone.  So  long  as  Mr. 
Bryant  controlled  it,  it  was  an  advocate  of  free 
trade  and  a  bold  champion  of  human  liberty. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    EDITOR    OF   A    GREAT   NEWSPAPER 

Bryant's  life  work  proved  to  be,  not  writing 
poetry,  but  editing  a  great  New  York  daily  paper. 
For  many  years  he  went  to  his  office  at  seven 
o'clock  every  morning.  He  was  never  strong  in 


body,    and   he   had   to   take    very   great    care    of 
his  health. 

Every  young  reader  should  learn  a  useful 
lesson  from  him,  although  it  is  not  easy  to  follow 
the  rigorous  mode  of  life  he  laid  out  for  himself 
and  followed  to  the  end  of  his  days.  He  himself 
tells  in  a  letter  what  he  did  : 

"  I  rise  early  at  this  time  of  the  year  (March), 
about  half-past  five  ;  in  summer,  half  an  hour  or 
even  an  hour  earlier.  Immediately,  with  very  little 
encumbrance  of  clothing,  I  begin  a  series  of  exer 
cises,  for  the  most  part  designed  to  expand  the 
chest,  and  at  the  same  time  call  into  action  all  the 
muscles  and  articulations  of  the  body.  These  are 
performed  with  dumb-bells,— the  very  lightest, 
covered  with  flannel, — with  a  pole,  a  horizontal 
bar,  and  a  light  chair  swung  around  my  head. 
After  a  full  hour  and  sometimes  more  passed  in 
this  manner,  I  bathe  from  head  to  foot.  When  at 
my  place  in  the  country,  I  sometimes  shorten  my 
exercise  in  the  chamber,  and,  going  out,  occupy 
myself  in  some  work  which  requires  brisk  motion. 
After  my  bath,  if  breakfast  be  not  ready,  I  sit 


42 

down  to  my  studies  till  I  am  called.  My  breakfast 
is  a  simple  one — hominy  and  milk,  or,  in  place  of 
hominy,  brown  bread,  or  oatmeal,  or  wheaten  grits, 
and,  in  season,  baked  sweet  apples.  Buckwheat 
cakes  I  do  not  decline,  nor  any  other  article  of  veg 
etable  food,  but  animal  food  I  never  take  at  break 
fast.  Tea  and  coffee  I  never  touch  at  any  time  ; 
sometimes  I  take  a  cup  of  chocolate,  which  has  no 
narcotic  effect,  and  agrees  with  me  very  well.  At 
breakfast  I  often  take  fruit,  either  in  its  natural 
state  or  freshly  stewed. 

''After  breakfast  I  occupy  myself  for  a  while 
with  my  studies,  and,  when  in  town,  I  walk  down 
to  the  office  of  the  Evening  Post,  nearly  three 
miles  distant,  and  after  about  three  hours  return, 
always  walking.  *  *  *  In  town,  where  I  dine 
late,  I  take  but  two  meals  a  day.  Fruit  makes  a 
considerable  part  of  my  diet.  My  drink  is  water. 

"That  I  may  rise  early,  I,  of  course,  go  to  bed 
early ;  in  town  as  early  as  ten ;  in  the  country 
somewhat  earlier.  *  *  *  I  abominate  drugs 
and  narcotics,  and  have  always  carefully  avoided 
anything  which  spurs  nature  to  exertions  which  it 


43 

would  not  otherwise  make.  Even  with  my  food  I 
do  not  take  the  usual  condiments,  such  as  pepper 
and  the  like." 

A  man  who  was  so  conscientious  about  eating 
and  drinking  and  going  to  bed  and  getting  up  in 
the  morning,  was  the  kind  of  man  who  would  be 
conscientious  in  editing  a  newspaper.  In  Bryant's 
early  newspaper  life  a  great  daily  paper  was  not  so 
much  a  machine  to  gather  news  from  every  quarter 
of  the  globe  and  serve  it  up  in  a  sensational  style,  as 
a  medium  for  discussing  public  questions.  Nowa 
days,  people  often  do  not  even  look  at  the  editorial 
column  ;  but  in  those  days  there  was  so  little  news 
they  were  obliged  to  read  this.  It  was  about  the 
only  fresh  thing  in  the  paper.  Once  a  week,  per 
haps,  a  sailing  vessel  from  Europe  would  come 
in  with  a  bundle  of  European  newspapers,  from 
which  the  editor  would  clip  and  reprint  a  summary 
of  foreign  news.  It  took  several  days  to  get  news 
from  Washington  to  New  York.  Local  items  were 
generally  sent  in  by  friends  of  the  editor.  For 
years  Bryant  had  but  one  assistant,  and  they  two 
did  all  the  reporting,  editing,  and  editorial  writing. 


44 

Reviews  of  books  were  sometimes  done  outside, 
and  the  shipping  and  financial  news  was  furnished 
by  a  sort  of  City  Press  Association.  It  was  Bry 
ant's  work  to  write  a  brilliant  editorial  or  two  every 
morning.  Many  of  these  were  on  politics,  others 
on  questions  of  local  public  interest.  But  Bryant 
tried  always  to  be  on  the  side  of  right  and  justice. 
For  years  the  Post  was  regarded  as  the  leading 
paper  of  the  people,  standing  for  the  rights  of  the 
people.  Many  a  time  it  fought  the  battles  of  the 
great  public,  and  sometimes  it  won. 

A  daily  paper  lasts  but  for  a  day;  then  it  is  dead 
and  another  takes  its  place.  To  know  how  com 
pletely  a  daily  paper  dies  when  its  day's  work  is 
done,  so  to  speak,  suppose  you  try  to  buy  a  copy 
three  months  old,  or  a  year  old.  You  remember 
three  months  ago  there  were  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  copies  printed  and  distributed.  You  suppose 
that  you  can  get  a  copy  at  the  office  of  the  paper, 
at  any  rate.  But  no;  all  more  than  three  months 
old  have  been  destroyed. 

In  New  York  there  was  once  a  little  old  shop, 
kept  by  a  queer  old  mulatto,  known  as  "  Back 


45 

Number  Bud,"  who  charged  a  dollar  and  a  half 
for  a  one  cent  paper,  less  than  a  year  old.  This 
shop  of  "Back  Number  Bud's"  was,  a  few  years 
ago,  the  only  place  in  New  York  City  where  back 
numbers  of  newspapers  could  be  purchased  at  any 
price  ;  and  in  smaller  cities  no  copies  whatever 
could  be  obtained,  except  by  chance. 

A  daily  newspaper  influences  the  people  to-day, 
and  then  dies,  and  another  paper  takes  its  place. 
But  if  one  man  is  making  that  paper  every  day  for 
fifty  years,  at  the  end  of  fifty  years,  doing  a  little 
every  day,  he  may  have  succeeded  several  times  in 
completely  revolutionizing  public  opinion. 

Besides  Bryant,  there  were  other  great  newspa 
per  editors  in  New  York.  One  was  Horace 
Greeley,  whose  name  every  child  has  heard. 
There  were  others,  too.  But  none  were  more 
faithful  than  Bryant.  For  years  his  newspaper 
work  took  so  much  of  his  time  that  he  wrote 
scarcely  any  poetry  at  all.  But  as  those  numbers 
of  the  Evening  Post  are  dead  and  forgotten,  we 
shall  never  know  how  much  good  he  did  during 
those  years  and  years  of  faithful  leadership. 


46 
CHAPTER   IX 

HOW    BRYANT   BECAME    RICH 

We  have  already  seen  that  Bryant  was  born  a 
poor  country  boy  ;  that  his  father  was  so  poor  he 
could  not  send  his  son  to  college  more  than  a  year; 
and  that  Bryant  himself,  when  he  first  went  to 
New  York,  worked  for  a  time  at  a  salary  of  only 
five  hundred  dollars  a  year. 

When  he  became  assistant  editor  of  the  Evening^ 
Post,  the  editor-in-chief,  William  Coleman,  who 
was  also  the  chief  proprietor,  thought  it  would  be 
well  to  give  a  small  interest  in  the  paper  to  one  or 
two  young  men,  so  that  when  the  older  proprie 
tors  died  others  would  be  coming  on  to  take  their 
places.  An  eighth  part  was  given  to  Bryant,  who 
was  to  pay  for  it  gradually  from  the  money  he 
could  save.  Another  portion  was  offered  to  a 
friend  of  his,  who  decided  not  to  take  it. 

Three  or  four  years  later,  when  Mr.  Coleman 
died,  Bryant  was  made  editor-in-chief,  and  bought 
a  larger  interest  in  the  paper.  He  finally  secured 
one  half.  The  other  half  was  owned  for  a  time  by 


47 

a  "Mr.  Burnham,  a  practical  printer.  Later,  one 
of  Bryant's  assistants,  whose  name  was  Leggett, 
owned  a  part  interest. 

In  those  days  newspapers  were  not  such  costly 
properties  as  they  are  to-day.  Bryant  always 
made  a  good  living,  but  he  regarded  the  work  in 
which  he  was  engaged  as  drudgery. 

After  he  had  been  in  the  newspaper  work  for 
some  years,  he  wrote  to  his  brother,  who  was  a 
pioneer  in  Illinois,  saying  he  thought  of  retiring 
from  the  Post,  and  asking  what  could  be  done  in 
the  West  with  four  or  five  thousand  dollars.  His 
interest  at  this  time  was  two  fifths,  so  that  he 
must  have  valued  the  paper  at  about  twelve  thou 
sand  dollars. 

About  this  time,  while  he  was  away  from 
New  York,  his  partner  and  assistant  editor,  Mr. 
Leggett,  nearly  ruined  the  paper.  When  Bryant 
returned  he  found  that  it  was  earning  no  money, 
and  that  he  could  not  sell  his  interest  at  any  price. 

He  therefore  set  to  work  to  win  popularity  for 
the  paper  once  more.  This  he  succeeded  gradu 
ally  in  doing,  and  during  the  next  ten  years  there 


48 

was  an  average  yearly  profit  of  over  $10,000,  of 
which  Bryant  received  a  little  less  than  half.  In 
1850  the  yearly  profit  was  $16,000,  and  in  1860  it 
was  $70,000.  If  Bryant  received  $30,000  for  his 
share  of  the  profits  of  a  year's  business,  he  might 
be  regarded  as  a  rich  man.  After  his  death,  the 
Evening  Post  was  sold  for  $900,000,  of  which 
Bryant's  share  was  half. 

During  his  later  years  he  bought  a  great  deal 
of  land  and  many  houses  on  Long  Island,  where 
he  had  a  country  home.  He  had  another  country 
home  at  Cummington,  his  grandfather's  homestead, 
where  he  built  a  beautiful  house.  He  also  traveled 
a  great  deal,  going  to  Europe  many  times,  and  to 
other  parts  of  the  world. 

Thus,  by  faithful,  plodding  work  for  many  years 
Bryant,  though  a  poet,  became  rich.  He  was  del 
icate  and  sympathetic,  like  all  true  poets,  but  he 
did  not  indulge  in  what  some  have  supposed  to  be 
the  poet's  liberty  to  be  reckless  and  careless.  He 
worked  faithfully  and  very  diligently  all  his  life; 
and  in  his  old  age  he  was  well  rewarded  for  all  his 
labor. 


49 
CHAPTER   X 

BRYANT   AS    AN    ORATOR    AND    PROSE    WRITER 

When  Bryant  went  to  New  York  it  was  a  com 
paratively  small  city.  As  years  passed,  it  grew  in 
size  and  wealth,  and  its  newspapers  became  more 
important.  We  have  seen  how  Bryant  became 
rich  by  his  ownership  of  the  Evening  Post.  He 
also  gained  in  honors.  He  was  the  editor  of  a 
great  daily  paper,  and  he  was  also  a  noted  poet. 
His  poems  had  been  published  both  in  this  country 
and  in  London,  and  many  thousands  of  copies  were 
sold.  Bryant  was  often  asked  to  write  poems  for 
great  celebrations,  or  in  honor  of  well-known 
people.  This  he  always  refused  to  do.  But  he 
often  made  public  addresses.  When  James  Feni- 
more  Cooper  died,  he  acted,  as  it  were,  as  the 
spokesman  of  the  nation's  grief.  He  pronounced 
the  funeral  eulogy  upon  Irving,  and  upon  many 
noted  people.  He  was  not  a  great  orator  like 
Daniel  Webster;  but  such  speeches  as  these  upon 
the  lives  of  great  men  have  seldom  been  surpassed. 

We  must  remember,  too,  that  all  his  life  Bryant, 


50 

in  his  editorials,  was  writing  prose.  From  these 
editorials  it  would  be  easy  to  select  some  of  the 
finest  pieces  of  prose  writing  in  our  language.  As 
most  of  them  were  on  the  passing  events  of  the 
day,  they  have  never  been  reprinted, — they  have 
died  with  the  newspaper.  But  here  is  a  passage 
on  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves  which  has  the 
ring  of  true  eloquence. 

President  Lincoln  had  proposed  gradual  eman 
cipation. 

' 'Gradual  emancipation!"  exclaims  Bryant. 
* '  Have  we  not  suffered  enough  from  slavery  with 
out  keeping  it  any  longer?  Has  not  blood  enough 
been  shed?  My  friends,  if  a  child  of  yours  were 
to  fall  into  the  fire,  would  you  pull  him  out  gradu 
ally?  If  he  were  to  swallow  a  dose  of  laudanum 
sufficient  to  cause  speedy  death,  and  a  stomach 
pump  were  at  hand,  would  you  draw  out  the  poison 
by  degrees  ?  If  your  house  were  on  fire,  would 
you  put  it  out  piecemeal?  And  yet  there  are  men 
who  talk  of  gradual  emancipation  by  force  of 
ancient  habit,  and  there  are  men  in  the  slave 
states  who  make  of  slavery  a  sort  of  idol  which 


51 

they  are  unwilling  to  part  with;  which,  if  it  must 
be  removed,  they  would  prefer  to  see  removed 
after  a  lapse  of  time  and  tender  leave-takings. 

' '  Slavery  is  a  foul  and  monstrous  idol,  a  Jugger 
naut  under  which  thousands  are  crushed  to  death; 
it  is  a  Moloch  for  whom  the  children  of  the  land 
pass  through  fire.  Must  we  consent  that  the 
number  of  the  victims  shall  be  diminished  gradu 
ally?  If  there  are  a  thousand  victims  this  year, 
are  you  willing  that  nine  hundred  shall  be  sacri 
ficed  next  year,  and  eight  hundred  the  next,  and 
so  on  until  after  the  lapse  of  ten  years  it  shall 
cease?  No,  my  friends,  let  us  hurl  the  grim  image 
from  its  pedestal.  Down  with  it  to  the  ground! 
Dash  it  to  fragments;  trample  it  in  the  dust. 
Grind  it  to  powder  as  the  prophets  of  old  com 
manded  that  the  graven  images  of  the  Hebrew 
idolaters  should  be  ground,  and  in  that  state  scatter 
it  to  the  four  winds  and  strew  it  upon  the  waters, 
that  no  human  hand  shall  ever  gather  up  the 
accursed  atoms  and  mould  them  into  an  image  to 
be  worshiped  again  with  human  sacrifice. " 

This  eloquent  passage  is  taken  from  an  editorial 


52 

in  the  Evening  Post.  The  following  is  from  a 
speech  delivered  at  a  dinner  given  to  Professor 
Morse,  the  inventor  of  the  telegraph : 

* '  There  is  one  view  of  this  great  invention  which 
impresses  me  with  awe.  Beside  me  at  this  board, 
along  with  the  illustrious  man  whom  we  are  met  to 
honor,  and  whose  name  will  go  down  to  the  latest 
generations  of  civilized  man,  sits  the  gentleman  to 
whose  clear-sighted  perseverance,  and  to  whose 
energy — an  energy  which  knew  no  discouragement, 
no  weariness,  no  pause — we  owe  it  that  the  tele 
graph  has  been  laid  which  connects  the  Old  World 
with  the  New  through  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  My 
imagination  goes  down  to  the  chambers  of  the 
middle  sea,  to  those  vast  depths  where  repose  the 
mystic  wire  on  beds  of  coral,  among  forests  of 
tangle,  or  on  the  bottom  of  the  dim  blue  gulfs, 
strewn  with  the  bones  of  whales  and  sharks, 
skeletons  of  drowned  men,  and  ribs  and  masts  of 
foundered  barks,  laden  with  wedges  of  gold  never 
to  be  coined,  and  pipes  of  the  choicest  vintages  of 
earth  never  to  be  tasted. 

1 '  Through   these  watery  solitudes,    among   the 


53 

fountains  of  the  great  deep,  the  abode  of  per 
petual  silence,  never  visited  by  living  human 
presence  and  beyond  the  sight  of  human  eye, 
there  are  gliding  to  and  fro,  by  night  and  by 
day,  in  light  and  in  darkness,  in  calm  and  in 
tempest,  currents  of  human  thought  borne  by  the 
electric  pulse  which  obeys  the  bidding  of  man. 
That  slender  wire  thrills  with  the  hopes  and  fears 
of  nations;  it  vibrates  to  every  emotion  that  can  be 
awakened  by  any  event  affecting  the  welfare  of  the 
human  race. 

"A  volume  of  contemporary  history  passes 
every  hour  of  the  day  from  one  continent  to 
another.  An  operator  on  the  continent  of  Europe 
gently  touches  the  keys  of  an  instrument  in  his 
quiet  room,  a  message  is  shot  with  the  swiftness  of 
light  through  the  abysses  of  the  sea,  and  before 
his  hand  is  lifted  from  the  machine  the  story  of 
revolts  and  revolutions,  of  monarchs  dethroned  and 
new  dynasties  set  up  in  their  place,  of  battles  and 
conquests  and  treaties  of  peace,  of  great  statesmen 
fallen  in  death,  lights  of  the  world  gone  out  and 
new  luminaries  glimmering  on  the  horizon,  is  writ- 


54 

ten  down  in  another  quiet  room  on  the  other  side 
of  the  globe. 

"Mr.  President,  I  see  in  the  circumstances 
which  I  have  enumerated  a  new  proof  of  the 
superiority  of  mind  to  matter,  of  the  independent 
existence  of  that  part  of  our  nature  which  we  call 
the  spirit,  when  it  can  thus  subdue,  enslave,  and 
educate  the  subtilest,  the  most  active,  and  in 
certain  of  its  manifestations  the  most  intractable 
and  terrible,  of  the  elements,  making  it  in  our 
hands  the  vehicle  of  thought,  and  compelling  it  to 
speak  every  language  of  the  civilized  world.  I  infer 
the  capacity  of  the  spirit  for  a  separate  state  of 
being,  its  indestructible  essence  and  its  noble 
destiny,  and  I  thank  the  great  discoverer  whom  we 
have  assembled  to  honor  for  this  confirmation  of 
my  faith."  

CHAPTER  XI 

OTHER  EVENTS  IN  BRYANT'S  LIFE 

Among  the  remaining  important  events  of  the 
poet's  life,  we  must  first  speak  of  the  publica 
tion  of  his  poems.  In  1822,  the  year  after  his 


55 

marriage  and  while  he  was  trying  to  practice  law  at 
Great  Barrington,  he  was  invited  to  deliver  the  usual 
poetical  address  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society 
of  Harvard  College.  For  this  occasion  he  wrote 
the  poem  of  ' <  The  Ages, "  with  which  his  collected 
works  now  open.  This  poem  secured  him  so 
much  reputation  that  he  published  a  very  small 
volume  of  his  works.  There  were  but  forty-four 
pages,  but  in  that  small  space  were  printed  some 
of  the  finest  poems  Bryant  ever  wrote.  The 
copies  did  not  sell  very  rapidly,  and  Bryant's  profit 
was  not  large.  When  he  was  old  and  famous,  a 
young  man  said  to  him,  "I  have  just  bought  a 
copy  of  the  first  volume  of  your  poems.  I  paid 
twenty  dollars  for  it. " 

«Hm!"    said   Bryant.       "A   good   deal  more 
than  I  got  for  writing  it!  " 

Of  his  other  poems,  a  large  number  were  writ 
ten  for  the  United  States  Literary  Gazette,  and 
the  various  magazines  he  edited  in  New  York. 
When  he  became  editor  of  the  Evening  Post  he 
continued  to  edit  the  United  States  Review  and 
Literary  Gazette,  until  it  was  discontinued.  After 


56 

that  he  assisted  in  editing  an  annual  called  The 
Talisman,  which  appeared  regularly  until  1829. 
To  this  he  contributed  a  considerable  number  of 
poems.  But  now  for  several  years  he  wrote  but 
little  poetry,  giving  all  his  time  and  energy  to  the 
newspaper. 

In  1831,  however,  he  published  a  second  collec 
tion  of  his  poems.  There  were  eighty  in  the 
volume.  Then  he  thought  he  w6uld  see  how 
they  would  be  received  in  England.  He  had  a 
friend  who  knew  Washington  Irving.  Irving  was 
a  famous  writer  at  this  time,  and  his  publisher  was 
John  Murray,  one  of  the  greatest  of  English  pub 
lishers.  Bryant  obtained  an  introduction  to  Irving 
by  letter,  and  asked  him  to  assist  in  getting  Mur 
ray  to  bring  out  a  London  edition  of  his  poems. 
Murray  would  not  do  it,  however.  But  Irving 
admired  Bryant's  work,  and  after  a  time  he  found 
another  publisher  who  was  willing  to  bring  out  the 
volume.  He  himself  wrote  an  introduction,  and 
dedicated  the  book  to  Rogers,  the  fashionable  poet 
of  England  at  that  time.  But  before  the  book 
game  out  the  publisher,  a  fussy  old  man,  came  to 


57 

Irving  and  said  it  would  never  do  to  print  in  Eng 
land  the  line, 

And  the  British  foeman  trembles. 

That  would  be  sure  to  offend  the  stolid  Briton's 
pride.     So  Irving  changed  the  line  to 

The  foeman  trembles  in  his  camp. 

Years  afterward  there  was  some  controversy  over 
this  change  on  the  part  of  Irving  ;  but  Irving  and 
Bryant  always  remained  good  friends. 

Other  volumes  of  his  collected  poems  were  pub 
lished  from  time  to  time  after  this  ;  but  they  are 
not  important.  The  only  other  great  poetic  work 
that  Bryant  attempted  was  his  translation  of  Ho 
mer's  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  When  he  translated  these 
grand  Greek  poems  into  English  blank  verse  he  was 
already  quite  an  old  man.  His  wife  had  died,  and 
he  wished  some  regular  work,  aside  from  his  paper, 
that  would  claim  his  thoughts.  So  he  made  it  a 
practice  to  translate  a  few  lines  every  day.  This 
he  kept  up  for  a  number  of  years,  until  he  had 
translated  the  whole  of  both  these  long  poems. 

For  this  he  probably  received  more  money  than 


58 

for  all  his  other  poems  put  together — over  seven 
teen  thousand  dollars  in  all. 

We  must  next  speak  of  his  travels  ;  for  Bryant 
was  a  great  traveler.  His  first  long  journey  was 
made  in  1832  to  visit  his  brothers,  who  had  become 
the  proprietors  of  a  large  landed  estate  in  Illinois. 
He  was  three  weeks  on  the  journey  out.  While 
crossing  the  prairies  between  the  Mississippi  River 
and  his  brothers'  plantation  he  met  a  company 
of  Illinois  volunteers,  who  were  going  to  take 
part  in  the  Black  Hawk  War.  They  were  led  by 
a  tall,  awkward,  uncouth  lad,  whose  appearance 
attracted  Bryant's  attention,  and  whose  conversa 
tion  pleased  him,  it  was  so  breezy  and  original. 
He  learned  many  years  afterward  that  this  captain 
was  Abraham  Lincoln.  When  in  1860  it  was  pro 
posed  to  nominate  Lincoln  for  President,  Lincoln 
came  to  New  York  to  speak,  and  Bryant  intro 
duced  him  to  the  audience. 

It  was  during  his  visit  to  his  brothers  that  he 
wrote  of 

The  unshorn  fields,  boundless  and  beautiful, 
For  which  the  speech  of  England  has  no  name, 


59 

He  evidently  liked  the  West,  for  we  have  seen  that 
later  he  proposed  to  sell  out  his  paper  and  go  there 
to  live. 

In  1834  he  made  his  first  trip  to  Europe.  While 
he  was  gone  he  wrote  letters  regularly  for  his 
paper  ;  but  he  traveled  leisurely  and  enjoyed  him 
self.  He  took  his  wife  and  daughters  with  him. 
He  remained  two  years,  when  he  was  called  home 
by  the  illness  of  the  associate  editor,  who  had 
charge  of  the  paper  in  his  absence. 

After  this,  at  various  times,  he  visited  Europe 
again,  crossing  the  Atlantic  in  all  six  times.  One 
of  these  journeys,  made  in  1857,  was  chiefly  for 
Mrs.  Bryant's  health.  They  landed  at  Havre,  and 
journeyed  through  Belgium  and  Holland,  France 
and  Spain  to  Madrid,  whence  they  crossed  to 
Naples,  where  Mrs.  Bryant  was  ill  for  four  months. 
She  recovered  somewhat,  but  when  at  last  they 
returned  to  the  United  States  she  was  not  much 
better.  Bryant  had  bought  the  old  homestead 
at  Cummington,  and  had  invited  all  his  relatives 
from  Illinois  to  join  him  in  ' '  hanging  the  pot."  In 
July,  1858,  he  had  to  notify  his  brothers,  some  of 


6o 

whom  were  already  at  Cummington,  that  his  wife 
was  too  ill  to  go  there  ;  and  on  the  2;th  of  that 
month  she  died.  In  regard  to  her  death  he  wrote 
to  a  friend,  ' '  I  lived  with  my  wife  forty-five  years, 
and  now  that  great  blessing  of  my  life  is  with 
drawn,  and  I  am  like  one  cast  out  of  paradise  and 
wandering  in  a  strange  world. " 

Nearly  ten  years  before  this,  in  1849,  he  made  a 
visit  of  two  months  to  Cuba,  going  by  way  of 
the  Carolinas  and  Florida.  He  was  ' '  received 
by  the  governor-general  of  Havana,  and  passed 
several  days  on  a  coffee  estate  at  Matanzas, 
going  then  by  rail  to  San  Antonio  in  a  car  built  at 
Newark,  drawn  by  an  engine  made  in  New  York, 
and  worked  by  an  American  engineer.  He 
breakfasted  at  the  inn  of  La  Punta  on  rice 
and  fresh  eggs  and  a  dish  of  meat.  He  witnessed 
a  cock-fight,  a  masked  ball,  a  murderer  garroted, 
and  slavery  in  some  of  its  most  inhuman 
phases." 

He  also  visited  Mexico,  Egypt,  and  the  Shet 
land  Islands,  and  'was  everywhere  an.  interested 
observer  of  men  and  manners. 


6i 


CHAPTER   XII 

HONORS  TO  THE  GREAT  POET 

We  have  seen  that  Bryant  was  not  only  a  great 
poet,  but  a  great  newspaper  editor,  an  eloquent 
orator,  and  a  rich  man.  So  he  came  to  be  a 
noted  public  character,  one  of  the  leading  citizens 
of  the  great  city  of  New  York.  From  this  time 
forward  until  his  death  in  extreme  old  age,  prom 
inent  statesmen,  politicians,  poets,  people  of  soci 
ety,  hastened  to  shower  honors  upon  him.  He 
was  asked  to  be  a  regent  of  the  University  of 
New  York,  but  declined.  Banquets  were  also 
tendered  him,  which  he  also  declined.  But  on 
his  seventieth  birthday,  November  3,  1864,  the 
Century  Club  of  New  York,  of  which  he  had  been 
one  of  the  founders,  resolved  to  make  a  great  fes 
tival  in  his  honor.  Bancroft,  the  historian,  was 
president  of  the  club,  and  greeted  Bryant  with  a 
graceful  speech  on  that  great  occasion.  In  Bry 
ant's  reply  is  the  following  passage,  which  will  be 
of  interest  to  all  young  people  as  showing  that 
this  great  and  wise  man  believed  in  placing 


62 

responsibility  on  the  young,  and  not  in  keeping 
them  in  the  background  for  wise  old  heads. 

"Much  has  been  said  of  the  wisdom  of  Old 
Age, "  said  he.  ' '  Old  Age  is  wise,  I  grant,  for  it 
self,  but  not  wise  for  the  community.  It  is  wise 
in  declining  new  enterprises,  for  it  has  not  the 
power  nor  the  time  to  execute  them  ;  wise  in 
shirking  from  difficulty,  for  it  has  not  the  strength 
to  overcome  it  ;  wise  in  avoiding  danger,  for  it 
lacks  the  faculty  of  ready  and  swift  action,  by 
which  dangers  are  parried  and  converted  into 
advantages.  But  this  is  not  wisdom  for  mankind 
at  large,  by  whom  new  enterprises  must  be  under 
taken,  dangers  met,  and  difficulties  surmounted. 
What  a  world  this  would  be  if  it  were  made  up 
of  old  men  !  " 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  was  there,  and  read  a 
beautiful  poem  composed  for  the  occasion.  There 
were  also  other  poems  read  by  their  authors, 
and  Whittier  and  Lowell,  who  could  not  be  there, 
sent  their  poems  to  be  read,  while  Longfellow  and 
a  great  many  other  famous  people  wrote  letters  of 
congratulation. 


63 

Here  are  some  of  the  beautiful  lines  from  the 
poem  which  Dr.  Holmes  read : 

How  can  we  praise  the  verse  whose  music  flows 
With  solemn  cadence  and  majestic  close, 
Pure  as  the  dew  that  filters  through  the  rose? 

How  shall  we  thank  him  that  in  evil  days 
He  faltered  never, — nor  for  blame  nor  praise, 
Nor  hire  nor  party,  shared  his  earlier  days  ? 

But  as  his  boyhood  was  of  manliest  hue, 
So  to  his  youth  his  manly  years  were  true, 
All  dyed  in  royal  purple  through  and  through. 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  was  there,  and  made  a 
speech,  which  he  closed  with  this  verse,  written  by 
the  poet  Crabbe  : 

True  bard,  and  simple  as  the  race 
Of  heaven-born  poets  always  are, 

When  stooping  from  their  starry  place 
They're  children  near  but  gods  afar. 

This  means  that  great  poets  seem  very  great  and 
magnificent  when  we  think  of  them  after  they  are 
dead  and  gone,  or  when  they  live  by  themselves 


64 

at  a  great  distance  ;  but  really,  when  you  know 
them,  they  are  as  natural  and  human  as  children. 
That  perfectly  describes  William  Cullen  Bryant. 

In  1874  Bryant  was  elected  an  honorary  member 
of  the  Russian  Academy  of  St.  Petersburg.  The 
same  year,  on  his  eightieth  birthday,  he  was  pre 
sented  with  an  address  of  honor,  signed  by  thou 
sands  and  thousands  of  people.  This  was  accom 
panied  by  a  special  vase,  completed  sometime 
afterward,  which  commemorated  his  literary 
career.  A  little  later  in  the  same  year  he  visited 
Governor  Tilden  at  Albany,  and  was  tendered  a 
public  reception.  After  that  some  of  his  friends 
proposed  that  he  should  be  nominated  as  one  of 
the  electors  on  the  Tilden  electoral  ticket,  when 
Tilden  was  a  candidate  for  the  presidency  of  the 
United  States. 

These  and  many  other  public  honors  were 
heaped  upon  him  in  his  old  age.  When  over 
eighty-three  years  of  age  he  was  invited  to  deliver 
an  address  on  the  unveiling  of  a  statue  of  Maz- 
zini,  the  Italian  patriot,  in  Central  Park,  New 
York  City.  After  it  was  over,  he  was  very  much 


65 

exhausted,  but  walked  across  the  park  to  the  house 
of  a  friend.  On  the  steps  he  fell,  being  old  and 
feeble  and  very  tired.  His  head  hit  on  a  stone  and 
he  fainted  away.  Less  than  two  weeks  later, 
June  12,  1878,  he  died  from  the  effects  of  this  fall. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

LEARNING    TO    LOVE    A    POET 

It  is  not  uncommon  to  hear  young  people  say, 
"  I  don't  like  poetry  at  all.  It  is  dry,  horrid  stuff, 
and  I  don't  understand  it."  No  doubt  some  of 
you  will  say  or  think  this  about  Bryant's  poetry. 
It  is  true  that  he  used  a  great  many  long,  hard 
words;  and  his  poems  are  sometimes  rather  solemn. 
What  is  more,  they  are  not  musical  like  Longfellow's. 
It  is  said  that  Bryant  had  no  ear  for  music.  For 
this  reason  you  cannot  read  his  poetry  as  you  do 
Longfellow's,  swinging  along  from  line  to  line. 
Young  people  who  read  in  the  sing-song  style  will 
find  that  they  cannot  do  that  when  they  come  to 
Bryant.  At  first  you  may  think  his  poetry  is,  for 
this  reason,  not  good  poetry  at  all.  Perhaps  it 


66 

would  be  better  to  call  Bryant  a  prose  poet  instead 
of  a  musical  poet.  But  when  you  get  used  to  hi? 
prose-like  poetry,  you  will  like  it  if  you  have  in 
you  the  least  love  of  nature  or  natural  beauty. 

Take  some  one  poem  that  you  like  and  read  it 
over  and  over  again,  until  you  have  it  almost  if  not 
quite  by  heart — for  instance,  that  beautiful  poem, 
1 '  The  Death  of  the  Flowers, "  written  on  the  occa 
sion  of  his  sister's  death  : 

The    melancholy   days   are   come,    the   saddest    of     the 

year, 
Of  wailing  winds,  and  naked  woods,  and  meadows  brown 

and  sere. 
Heaped  in  the  hollows  of  the  grove,  the  nitumn  leaves 

lie  dead; 
They  rustle  to    the    eddying   gust,    and    to  the  rabbit's 

tread. 
The  robin  and  the  wren  are  flown,  and  from  the  shrubs 

the  jay, 
And  from  the  wood-top  calls  the  crow  through  all  the 

gloomy  day. 

Other  poems  that  are  well  worth  reading  many 
times,  until  you  really  understand  and  love  them, 
are  ' '  The  Waterfowl, "  ' '  Autumn  Woods, "  * '  No- 


6; 

vember,"  "The  Gladness  of  Nature,"  "The 
Past,"  "To  the  Fringed  Gentian,"  "The  Con 
queror's  Grave,"  "An  Invitation  to  the  Country," 
-The  Wind  and  the  Stream,"  "The  Poet," 
-May  Evening,"  "The  Flood  of  Years,"  and 
"Our  Fellow-Worshipers."  To  have  mastered 
one  of  these  poems  is  better  than  to  have  read  the 
whole  of  Bryant  carelessly.  Take  one,  and  read 
it  until  by  very  force  of  habit  you  learn  to  love  it; 
and  then  the  next  poem  you  take  up  will  reveal 
beauties  which  you  never  suspected  when  you 
first  read  it. 

There  is  also  a  city  poem  of  Bryant's,    "The 
Crowded  Street,"  well  worth  learning  to  love  : 

Let  me  move  slowly  through  the  street, 

Filled  with  an  ever-shifting  train, 
Amid  the  sound  of  steps  that  beat 

The  murmuring  walks  like  autumn  rain. 

How  fast  the  flitting  figures  come! 

The  mild,  the  fierce,  the  stony  face ; 
Some  bright  with  thoughtless  smiles,  and  some 

Where  secret  tears  have  left  their  trace. 

And  here  is  one  more  short  poem,  which  may  you 


68 

all   remember,  long  after  you  have  forgotten  that 
you  ever  read  this  little  history  of  the  poet's  life  ! 

THE  DEATH  OF  LINCOLN. 

Oh,  slow  to  smite  and  swift  to  spare, 

Gentle  and  merciful  and  just ! 
Who,  in  the  fear  of  God,  didst  bear 

The  sword  of  power,  a  nation's  trust! 

In  sorrow  by  thy  bier  we  stand, 

Amid  the  awe  that  hushes  all, 
And  speak  the  anguish  of  a  land 

That  shook  with  horror  at  thy  fall. 

Thy  task  is  done ;  the  bond  are  free : 
We  bear  thee  to  an  honored  grave, 

Whose  proudest  monument  shall  be 
The  broken  fetters  of  the  slave. 

Pure  was  thy  life ;  its  bloody  close 

Hath  placed  thee  with  the  sons  of  light? 

Among  the  noblest  host  of  those 
Who  perished  in  the  cause  of  Right. 


THE  STORY  OF 

HENRY  W.  LONGFELLOW 


HENR  Y  WA  DS  WOR  TH  LONGFELLO  W 


LONGFELLOW 


CHAPTER    I 

A  GREAT  POET 

Lives  of  great  men  all  remind  us 
We  can  make  our  lives  sublime, 

And,  departing,  leave  behind  us 
Footprints  on  the  sands  of  time ; — 

Footprints,  that  perhaps  another, 
Sailing  o'er  life's  solemn  main, 

A  forlorn  and  shipwrecked  brother, 
Seeing,  shall  take  heart  again. 

You  doubtless  remember  how  Robinson  Crusoe 
one  day  found  footprints  in  the  sand  on  the 
shore  of  his  desert  island.  *  *  I  am  not  alone  ! " 
said  he  to  himself.  ' '  Another  human  being  has 
been  here  before  me."  Soon  afterward  he  had 
the  good  fortune  to  find  his  '  *  man  Friday. " 

In  geology  we  learn  of  footprints  in  rocks.  Liv 
ing  beings  ages  ago  walked  on  the  soft  sand,  an4 


72 

that  sand,  lying  for  a  long  time  undisturbed,  was 
at  length  hardened  into  rock. 

The  poet  Longfellow  has  left  ' '  footprints  on  the 
sands  of  time  "  in  the  shape  of  his  poems,  and  we 
may  say  those  poems  are  like  footprints  hard 
ened  into  rock,  which  will  last  for  ages.  Many  an 
unhappy  soul,  after  reading  the  sad,  sweet,  beauti 
ful  verses  of  the  ' '  Psalm  of  Life, "  has  taken  heart 
to  go  on  fighting  life's  battle  nobly,  and  doing 
good  instead  of  yielding  to  the  temptation  to  be 
weak  and  careless. 

To  realize  what  it  is  to  be  a  great  poet,  think  of 
the  millions  of  boys  and  girls,  old  and  young,  in 
the  United  States,  and  in  Great  Britain  and  other 
foreign  countries,  who  have  learned  by  heart  such 
famous  poems  as  ''The  Village  Blacksmith," 
' '  The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus, "  and  ' '  The  Build 
ing  of  the  Ship."  You,  yourself,  no  doubt,  dear 
reader,  when  you  want  something  to  memorize, 
turn  to  a  volume  of  Longfellow's  poems.  You  have 
learned  to  love  the  poems :  therefore  let  me  introduce 
to  you  the  man  who  first  lived  the  poems  in  his  own 
life,  and  you  will  certainly  learn  to  love  him,  too. 


73 

The  poet  was  born  February  27,  1807,  in  Port 
land,  Maine.  At  the  time  of  his  birth  his  parents 
were  living  in  Captain  Stephenson's  house,  Mrs. 
Stephenson  being  a  sister  of  the  elder  Mr.  Long 
fellow.  But  this  was  only  temporarily,  indeed 
only  while  the  Stephenson  family  were  visiting  the 
West  Indies.  The  Longfellows  soon  moved  into 
the  house  of  General  Peleg  Wadsworth,  where  Mrs. 
Longfellow  had  spent  part  of  her  girlhood.  It 
is  said  to  have  been  the  first  brick  house  ever 
built  in  Portland,  and  it  was  one  of  the  finest. 
Here  they  lived  until  the  baby  grew  into  a  man. 


CHAPTER   II 

LONGFELLOW'S  ANCESTORS 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow  belonged  to  a 
good  old  New  England  family.  His  father  was  a 
lawyer  in  Portland,  Maine;  his  grandfather  had 
been  a  schoolmaster;  and  his  great-grandfather 
had  been  a  blacksmith, 


74 

The  Longfellows  were  most  of  them  tall,  strong 
men,  who  had  been  soldiers,  sailors  and  the  like, 
and  none  of  them  had  shown  the  slightest  talent 
for  poetry.  But  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow 
was  small  and  delicate,  though  he  always  stood 
very  erect  and  was  a  finely  formed  man. 

His  grandfather  on  his  mother's  side  was  Gen 
eral  Peleg  Wadsworth,  who  was  once  captured  by 
the  British  and  came  near  being  shipped  off  to 
England;  but  he  escaped  and  joined  his  wife  and 
family  as  they  were  going  to  Boston.  The  poet 
also  had  an  uncle  Henry  (for  whom  he  was 
named),  who  had  been  a  lieutenant  with  Com 
modore  Preble  and  was  killed  at  Tripoli  a 
short  time  before  his  namesake  was  born.  An 
other  uncle  was  a  second  lieutenant  on  the  frigate 
Constitution  when  it  captured  the  British  ship 
Guerriere  in  1812. 

On  his  mother's  side,  Longfellow  could  trace  his 
origin  straight  back  to  John  Alden  and  Priscilla 
Mullens,  who  came  over  in  the  Mayflower,  and 
whom  he  has  made  immortal  in  his  poem  of  "The 
Courtship  of  Miles  Standish, " 


75 

In  short,  Longfellow  belonged  to  quite  an 
aristocratic  family,  as  New  England  aristocracy 
goes,  and  it  was  a  fairly  wealthy  family  also. 
His  father  was  once  a  member  of  Congress,  and 
afterward  was  chosen  to  make  the  speech  welcom 
ing  Lafayette  when  he  visited  Portland  in  1825. 

The  house  where  Longfellow  was  born  is  still 
standing  and  is  well  known  to  the  children  of  Port 
land.  In  the  old  days  it  was  in  the  fashionable 
part  of  the  town,  facing  the  ocean  beach.  But 
now  land  has  been  filled  in  for  a  long  distance  out 
into  the  ocean,  and  on  this  new  land  stand  the 
engine-house  and  tracks  of  the  Grand  Trunk  rail 
way.  So  the  house  is  now  in  a  very  poor  neigh 
borhood. 

One  day  a  teacher  in  a  Portland  school  asked 
her  pupils  if  they  knew  where  Longfellow  was  born. 

' '  I  know, "  said  a  little  girl.  ' '  In  Patsey  Con 
nor's  bedroom." 

Many  poor  people  lived  in  the  house,  and  the 
room  where  Longfellow  was  born  was  now  Patsey 
Connor's  bedroom;  but  all  the  children  of  Port 
land  knew  where  it  was. 


76 

CHAPTER    III 

LONGFELLOW'S  BOYHOOD 

Our  poet  seems  to  have  been  a  quiet,  well 
behaved  child,  rather  slight,  but  always  standing 
up  perfectly  straight.  He  was  careful  of  his  clothes, 
and  learned  his  lessons  well.  Some  people  seem 
to  think  that  a  very  good  little  boy  will  never  grow 
up  to  be  worth  anything.  Certainly  it  is  a  good 
thing  to  have  plenty  of  spirit  and  energy;  but 
Longfellow  is  an  example  of  a  boy  who  was  as  good 
as  George  Washington  is  said  to  have  been,  and 
he  grew  up  to  be  the  greatest  poet  in  America,  just 
as  Washington  grew  up  to  be  the  greatest  presi 
dent. 

When  he  was  three  years  old  little  Henry  was 
sent  to  school.  For  a  good  many  years  a  certain 
Ma'am  Fellows  had  kept  a  school  in  a  little  brick 
schoolhouse  not  far  from  the  Wadsworth  mansion, 
and  it  was  she  who  taught  the  poet  his  first 
lessons.  Ma'am  Fellows  was  a  firm  believer  in 
the  doctrine  that  ' '  one  should  never  smile  in  school 
hours."  Years  afterward  Longfellow  told  what  he 


77 

remembered  of  her.  "My  recollections  of  my 
first  teacher,"  said  the  poet,  "are  not  vivid:  but  I 
recall  that  she  was  bent  on  giving  me  a  right  start 
in  life;  that  she  thought  that  even  very  young  chil 
dren  should  be  made  to  know  the  difference  be 
tween  right  and  wrong;  and  that  severity  of 
manner  was  more  practical  than  gentleness  of 
persuasion.  She  inspired  me  with  one  trait, — that 
is,  a  genuine  respect  for  my  elders. " 

He  afterward  went  to  several  other  schools,  in 
cluding  one  in  Love  Lane.  When  he  grew  a  little 
older  he  had  to  write  compositions,  and  there  is  a 
story  about  the  first  one  he  ever  wrote.  His 
teacher  told  him  to  write  a  composition;  but  he 
thought  he  couldn't  do  it. 

"But  you  can  write  words,  can  you  not?"  asked 
the  teacher. 

"  Yes,"  was  the  response. 

"Then  you  can  put  words  together?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Then,"  said  the  instructor,  "you  may  take 
your  slate  and  go  out  behind  the  schoolhouse,  and 
there  you  can  find  something  to  write  about;  and 


78 

then  you  can  tell  what  it  is,  what  it  is  for,  and  what 
is  to  be  done  with  it;  and  that  will  be  a  composi 
tion." 

Henry  took  his  slate  and  went  out.  He  went 
behind  Mr.  Finney's  barn,  which  chanced  to  be 
near;  and,  seeing  a  fine  turnip  growing,  he  thought 
he  knew  what  it  was,  what  it  was  for,  and  what 
would  be  done  with  it. 

A  half  hour  had  been  allowed  young  Henry  for 
his  first  undertaking  in  writing  compositions. 
Before  that  time  had  expired  he  carried  in  his  work, 
very  neatly  written  on  his  slate.  It  was  so  well  done 
that  his  teacher  was  both  surprised  and  pleased. 

There  has  been  published  in  the  newspapers  a 
very  funny  poem  about  a  turnip,  and  some  have 
said  that  it  is  the  one  which  Longfellow  wrote  at 
this  time.  But  the  truth  is,  he  never  wrote  it,  for 
that  first  composition  was  rubbed  off  the  slate  and 
lost  forever.  This  other  poem  was  written  years 
afterward  by  somebody  for  a  joke.  Here  is  the 
poem,  however,  for  you  to  laugh  about.  You  will 
clearly  see  that  Longfellow  could  not  have  writ 
ten  it  himself. 


79 

MR.  FINNEY'S  TURNIP 

Mr.  Finney  had  a  turnip, 

And  it  grew,  and  it  grew; 
And  it  grew  behind  the  barn, 

And  the  turnip  did  no  harm. 

And  it  grew  and  it  grew, 

Till  it  could  grow  no  taller; 
Then  Mr.  Finney  took  it  up, 

And  put  it  in  the  cellar. 

There  it  lay,  there  it  lay, 

Till  it  began  to  rot ; 
When  his  daughter  Susie  washed  it, 

And  put  it  in  the  pot. 

Then  she  boiled  it,  and  she  boiled  it, 

As  long  as  she  was  able ; 
Then  his  daughter  Lizzie  took  it, 

And  she  put  it  on  the  table. 

Mr.  Finney  and  his  wife 

Both  sat  down  to  sup; 
And  they  ate,  and  they  ate, 

Until  they  ate  the  turnip  up. 

When  he  was  only  thirteen  years  old  Longfellow 
wrote  a  real  poem,  which,  though  it  has  never  been 


8o 

published,  is  said  to  have  been  preserved  in  manu 
script.  It  was  entitled  ''Venice,  an  Italian  Song." 
The  manuscript  is  dated  "Portland  Academy, 
March  17,  1820,"  and  is  signed  with  the  full  name 
of  the  writer. 

It  was  not  long  after  this  that  his  first  published 
poem  appeared.  It  was  entitled  '  *  The  Battle  of 
Lovell's  Pond, "  and  was  printed  in  one  of  the  news 
papers  of  Portland. 

There  were  only  two  papers  in  that  city  then. 
Having  written  the  ballad  very  carefully  and 
neatly,  Henry  thought  he  would  like  to  see  it  in 
print;  but  he  was  afraid  to  take  it  to  the  editor. 
One  of  his  school-mates  persuaded  him,  however, 
and  he  stole  up  one  night  and  dropped  it  into  the 
editorial  box. 

He  waited  patiently  for  the  next  issue  of  the 
paper,  and  then  scanned  its  columns  for  his  poem, 
which  he  thought  surely  would  be  there.  But 
it  wasn't.  Many  weeks  passed  and  it  did  not 
appear.  At  last  he  went  and  asked  to  have  his 
manuscript  returned. 

It  was  given  him  and  he  took  it  over  to  the  other 


8i 

paper,  the  Portland  Gazette,  by  whose  editor  it 
was  accepted  and  immediately  published  over  the 
signature  "  Henry."  Here  are  the  first  two  stanzas: 

Cold,  cold  is  the  north  wind  and  rude  is  the  blast 
That  sweeps  like  a  hurricane  loudly  and  fast, 
As  it  moans  through  the  tall  waving  pines,  lone  and  drear, 
Sighs  a  requiem  sad  o'er  the  warrior's  bier. 

The  war-whoop  is  still,  and  the  savage's  yell 

Has  sunk  into  silence  along  the  wild  dell; 

The  din  of  the  battle,  the  tumult  is  o'er, 

And  the  war-clarion's  voice  is  now  heard  no  more. 

After  that  the  young  poet  could  have  his  verses 
printed  in  that  paper  as  often  as  he  liked,  and  he 
wrote  a  number  of  pieces  for  this  purpose. 

He  went  to  Portland  Academy,  and  was  ready 
to  enter  college  at  fourteen.  One  of  his  teachers 
at  the  academy,  who,  no  doubt,  did  a  great  deal 
to  impress  his  young  mind,  was  Jacob  Abbott, 
the  author  of  the  "Rollo  Books."  Some  years  ago 
these  were  the  most  popular  books  for  boys  and 
girls  then  known,  and  perhaps  some  of  the  young 
people  of  this  generation  have  read  them.  If  they 
have,  they  will  know  what  fine  books  they  are. 


82 


CHAPTER   IV 

SOMETHING    ABOUT    THE    TIMES    WHEN  LONGFELLOW 
WAS    YOUNG 

In  the  days  when  Longfellow  was  a  child,  people 
were  just  changing  from  the  old  fashioned  style  of 
living  to  ways  that  were  new  and  more  modern.  The 
older  men  wore  knee  breeches  and  silk  stockings, 
and  shoes  with  big  buckles,  and  had  their  long 
hair  gathered  in  a  knot  or  "club  "  behind. 

Those  were  strict  Puritan  days,  too.  Everybody 
was  very  careful  about  going  to  church  and  keeping 
Sunday,  and  theaters  were  prohibited  until  a  few 
years  later.  They  do  say,  however,  that  the  peo 
ple  drank  a  good  deal  of  Jamaica  rum  and  did 
other  things  that  we  should  not  approve  of  to-day. 

Portland  was  quite  a  seaport,  and  had  formerly 
enjoyed  great  business  prosperity.  But  in  the 
year  that  Longfellow  was  born,  the  embargo  was 
put  on  shipping,  and  severe  "hard  times"  came 
on.  It  is  said  "  the  grass  literally  grew  upon  the 
wharves. " 

Five  years  after  his  birth,  came  the  war  of  1812. 


83 

Fortifications  were  thrown  up  on  Munjoy's  Hill, 
and  privateers  were  fitted  out  in  the  harbor.  In 
his  beautiful  poem,  ' '  My  Lost  Youth, "  Longfellow 
refers  to  this. 

This  poem  is  very  interesting  when  we  think  of 
the  actual  places  to  which  Longfellow  refers.  Of 
course  he  is  thinking  of  Portland  when  he  writes: 

Often  I  think  of  the  beautiful  town 

That  is  seated  by  the  sea; 
#  ***** 

I  can  see  the  shadowy  lines  of  its  trees, 

And  catch,  in  sudden  gleams, 
The  sheen  of  the  far-surrounding  seas, 
And  islands  that  were  the  Hesperides 

Of  all  my  boyish  dreams. 
****** 
I  remember  the  black  wharves  and  the  slips, 

And  the  sea-tides  tossing  free ; 
And  Spanish  sailors  with  bearded  lips, 
And  the  beauty  and  mystery  of  the  ships, 

And  the  magic  of  the  sea. 

In  the  following  lines  he  refers  to  the  fortifica 
tions  that  were  put  up  when  he  was  five  years  old: 


84 

I  remember  the  bulwarks  by  the  shore, 

And  the  fort  upon  the  hill ; 
The  sunrise  gun,  with  its  hollow  roar, 
The  drum-beat  repeated  o'er  and  o'er. 

And  the  bugle  wild  and  shrill. 

On  the  4th  of  September,  1813,  the  Boxer,  British 
brig  of  war,  was  captured  off  the  Maine  coast  by  the 
American  brig  Enterprise,  and  a  few  days  later  was 
brought  into  Portland  harbor.  On  the  next  day 
both  commanders,  who  had  been  killed  in  the 
encounter,  were  buried  in  the  cemetery  at  the  foot 
of  Munjoy's  Hill.  The  poet  thus  records  his  recol 
lections  of  that  event: 

I  remember  the  sea-fight  far  away, 

How  it  thundered  o'er  the  tide! 
And  the  dead  captains,  as  they  lay 
In  their  graves,  o'erlooking  the  tranquil  bay, 

Where  they  in  battle  died. 

While  referring  to  this  poem,  it  may  be  noted 
that  Longfellow  was  very  fond  of  the  country,  as 
well  as  of  the  sea,  and  he  never  lived  in  a  city 
larger  than  Cambridge,  which  is  really  no  city  at 
all,  but  merely  a  college  town.  Near  his  home  in 


85 

Portland  was  a  large  piece  of  woodland  where  he 
was  very  fond  of  roaming  about  with  some  of  his 
friends.  He  thus  speaks  of  it  in  the  poem: 

I  can  see  the  breezy  dome  of  groves, 
The  shadows  of  Deering's  Woods ; 
And  the  friendships  old  and  the  early  loves 
Come  back  with  a  sabbath  sound,  as  of  doves 

In  quiet  neighborhoods. 
****** 

I  remember  the  gleams  and  glooms  that  dart 

Across  the  schoolboy's  brain  ; 
The  song  and  the  silence  in  the  heart, 
That  in  part  are  prophecies,  and  in  part 

Are  longings  wild  and  vain. 

At  the  end  of  each  verse  comes  the  beautiful 
refrain — 

And  the  voice  of  that  fitful  song 
Sings  on,  and  is  never  still : 
"  A  boy's  will  is  the  wind's  will, 
And  the  thoughts  of  youth  are  long,  long  thoughts." 

Several  other  poems  were  suggested  by  the 
sights  and  sounds  of  the  poet's  boyhood.  One  was 
"The  Ropewalk,"  describing  a  building  that  he 


86 

often  passed.  There  was  also  a  factory  where 
crude  pottery  was  made  and  where  he  went  and 
watched  the  turning  wheel  that  suggested  to  him 
many  years  later  the  beautiful  poem  entitled 
' '  Keramos. " 


CHAPTER   V 

COLLEGE    DAYS 

Longfellow  went  to  college  when  he  was  very 
young,  indeed  only  fourteen  years  old.  In  those 
days  the  requirements  for  entering  college  were  not 
so  severe  as  they  are  now;  yet  they  were  by  no 
means  easy,  and  only  a  bright  scholar  could 
pass  the  examinations.  Longfellow  was  one  of 
the  bright  boys.  He  stood  second  in  his  class. 
He  had  an  elder  brother,  Stephen,  who  entered  col 
lege  at  that  same  time. 

His  father  and  grandfather  were  graduates  of 
Harvard  College;  but  as  his  father  was  then  a 
trustee  of  Bowdoin  College,  at  Brunswick,  Maine, 
he  was  sent  there.  It  happened  that  in  the  class 


which  he  entered  there  were  several  other  youths 
who  became  very  famous  men.  One  was  Haw 
thorne,  the  greatest  American  novelist;  and  in  the 
class  just  above  was  Franklin  Pierce,  who  after 
wards  became  President  of  the  United  States. 
Not  quite  so  famous  as  these  two  was  another  class 
mate  of  Longfellow's,  John  S.  C.  Abbott,  whose 
histories  for  young  people  have  been  only  less  pop 
ular  than  the  * '  Rollo  Books"  written  by  his  brother, 
Jacob  Abbott,  a  somewhat  older  man. 

In  those  days  no  one  suspected  that  there  were 
in  that  college  men  destined  to  become  so  great. 
Longfellow  was  merely  an  aristocratic  young  man 
who  stood  well  in  his  classes  and  '  *  wrote  verses  as 
a  pastime."  The  poet  of  the  class  was  a  young 
man  named  Mellen.  Hawthorne  was  very  shy  and 
never  learned  his  lessons.  He  studied  in  his  own 
way,  and  his  professors  had  a  very  good  opinion  of 
him,  but  he  was  not  a  good  scholar. 

There  were  in  college  two  different  kinds  of 
students,  the  country  boys  and  the  city  fellows. 
The  country  boys  were  usually  rough,  brown,  and 
not  very  well  dressed.  They  would  lumber  along 


88 

the  streets  like  farmers,  as  they  were.  It  may 
easily  be  imagined  that  they  were  not  rich.  The 
lads  from  the  seaports,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
city  fellows,  had  white  hands  and  faces,  were  fash 
ionably  dressed,  and  were  usually  considered  rich. 

Longfellow  was  a  city  lad,  and  had  plenty  of 
money.  Hawthorne  was  more  of  a  country  fellow. 
While  in  college  the  two  were  not  intimate.  Both 
were  naturally  modest  and  shy,  and  each  had  only 
a  few  friends  with  whom  he  associated.  But  some 
years  after  they  left  college,  Hawthorne  sent  his 
first  volume  of  stories,  the  ' '  Twice-told  Tales, "  to 
Longfellow,  then  a  professor  at  Harvard  College, 
and  Longfellow  wrote  a  very  kind  article  about  it, 
which  was  published  in  the  North  American  Review. 
It  was  the  first  worthy  recognition  Hawthorne  had 
received,  and  he  was  very  grateful  to  Longfellow. 
This  made  them  warm  friends,  and  such  they 
remained  for  the  rest  of  their  lives. 

During  his  first  year  Longfellow  did  most  of  his 
studying  at  home.  He  was  doubtless  a  little  home 
sick  at  Brunswick,  at  first.  That  town  is  not  very 
far  from  Portland,  but  it  took  some  time  to  get 


89 

there,  for  in  those  days  there  were  no  railroads. 
The  two  Longfellow  boys  went  up  the  coast  in  a 
sailing  boat  to  a  town  not  far  from  Brunswick,  and 
from  there  they  went  by  stage. 

While  in  college  young  Henry  had  no  great 
adventures.  He  was  a  well  behaved  young  man, 
never  hazed  anybody,  and  was  generally  thought 
rather  a  good  fellow,  but  not  remarkable  in  any 
way.  He  wrote  a  good  deal  of  poetry,  which  was 
printed  in  the  United  States  Literary  Gazette, 
without  his  name;  but  his  cousin  John  Owen,  then 
at  college  with  him,  told  him  to  his  face  one  day 
that  poetry  was  not  his  forte. 

One  other  thing  remains  to  be  said  of  his  college 
life.  Though  rich,  he  was  generous  toward  his 
poorer  classmates,  and  at  the  same  time  very 
modest  and  quiet  about  it.  Here  is  one  case,  and 
there  are  a  good  many  others. 

There  was  a  student  who  had  worked  hard  to 
finish  his  college  course;  but  one  day  he  received 
word  that  owing  to  the  death  of  his  father  he  would 
have  to  leave  college  and  earn  his  own  living;  the 
family  could  spare  him  no  more  money  to  help  him 


through.  This  was  sad  news  to  him,  for  he  had  great 
ambitions  and  hopes  concerning  his  future  career. 
A  friend  of  his,  belonging  to  the  class  below 
Longfellow's,  went  to  the  poet  and  asked  him 
if  he  would  not  head  a  subscription,  or  do  some 
thing  of  the  kind.  At  this  time  the  poet  had  been 
contributing  pretty  regularly  to  the  United  States 
Literary  Gazette,  and  had  never  received  any  pay 
for  it.  Many  of  the  poems  had  been  copied  in  the 
daily  and  weekly  papers. 

He  wrote  a  note  to  the  editor  saying  that  he 
thought  he  deserved  in  the  future  to  be  paid  for 
his  contributions.  His  intention  was  to  give  the 
money  to  his  college  mate.  But  the  editor  re 
plied  that  poems  were  generally  printed  gratis, 
and  made  some  vague  promises. 

This  was  a  disappointment;  but  the  classmate 
who  tells  the  story,  Longfellow,  and  his  brother 
Stephen  drew  up  a  subscription  paper,  put  down 
such  sums  as  they  could  afford,  and  passed  the 
document  about  among  the  college  men.  Enough 
money  was  raised  to  carry  the  poor  fellow  through 
his  college  course, 


"For  some  reason  or  other,"  says  his  cousin  John 
Owen,  ' '  the  poet  never  liked  to  speak  of  this  act  of 
his  earlier  career.  He  and  I  have  talked  about  it, 
to  be  sure;  but  one  day  he  suggested  that  the  sub 
ject  be  forever  dropped.  It  was  one  of  his  peculiar 
habits — always  to  be  doing  some  one  a  favor,  and 
to  wish  that  it  be  kept  a  profound  secret. " 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE    YOUNG    PROFESSOR 

When  Longfellow  graduated  from  college  he 
was  a  young  man  of  nineteen,  slender,  well  built, 
and  graceful.  He  had  blue  eyes  and  light-brown 
hair  which  he  wore  rather  heavy  about  his  head. 
In  his  dress  he  was  somewhat  fastidious,  and  after 
ward  certain  people  were  inclined  to  make  fun  of  his 
variety  of  neckties  and  light  vests.  But  he  always 
showed  the  best  of  taste. 

His  father  wished  him  to  be  a  lawyer.  But  in 
the  year  that  he  graduated  a  new  professorship 


92 

was  founded  at  Bowdoin,  the  professorship  of 
modern  languages,  and  he  was  chosen  to  fill  it. 
Before  that,  Latin  and  Greek  had  been  considered 
the  only  languages  worth  studying.  But  French, 
German,  Italian,  and  Spanish  were  demanding 
attention. 

The  story  is  that,  while  a  student  in  college, 
Longfellow  had  written  a  metrical  translation  of 
one  of  Horace's  odes,  which  he  had  read  at  a  gen 
eral  examination.  One  of  the  examiners,  the 
Hon.  Benjamin  Orr,  a  distinguished  lawyer  of 
Maine,  was  greatly  struck  with  this  translation, 
which  seemed  to  him  especially  beautiful.  He 
was  one  of  the  board  of  trustees,  and  when  the 
new  professorship  was  created  he  nominated  the 
future  poet,  speaking  of  this  translation  as  evi 
dence  of  his  ability  to  fill  the  position. 

Longfellow  was  only  nineteen  years  old,  and  the 
proposition  came  to  him  as  a  great  surprise.  As  a 
preparation  he  was  to  be  allowed  to  spend  three 
years  in  Europe.  By  this  time  he  was  anxious  to 
enter  a  literary  career,  and  this  seemed  to  be  just 
the  chance.  His  father  consented  and  he  pre- 


93 

pared  to  set  out  for  Europe,  though  he  did  not 
start  until  the  following  spring. 

What  his  experiences  were  abroad,  you  may 
learn  by  reading  ' '  Outre-Mer. "  This  book  is 
partly  a  story,  but  in  reality  it  describes  Long 
fellow's  journeyings  through  Germany,  France, 
Italy,  and  Spain.  He  went  from  New  York  on  a 
slow  sailing  vessel ;  but  his  trip  was  a  pleasant  one, 
and  he  seemed  always  to  be  lucky,  as  he  was 
through  life. 

At  last,  at  twenty-two,  he  found  himself  a  pro 
fessor  in  Bowdoin  College,  and  quite  a  distin 
guished  young  man.  His  ' '  April  Day "  and 
* '  Woods  in  Winter, "  two  short  poems,  had  been 
copied  in  many  newspapers,  and  had  even  got 
into  the  reading  books  of  that  day.  His  name 
was  not  attached  to  any  of  these,  and  no  one 
thought  of  him  as  a  great  poet.  It  must  be  re 
membered  that  teaching  was  hereafter  the  business 
of  his  life;  and  a  very  faithful  teacher  he  was. 
Up  to  this  time,  and  for  long  afterward,  he  did 
not  receive  any  money  whatever  for  his  poetry, 
though  occasionally  some  was  promised  him. 


94 

He  studied  very  hard.  He  knew  German  thor 
oughly  well,  and  also  French,  Italian,  Spanish, 
Swedish,  Finnish,  and  even  something  of  other 
modern  languages.  In  those  days  people  knew 
very  little  about  these  languages,  and  few  sup 
posed  they  had  literature  that  was  worth  any 
thing.  Longfellow  became  a  great  scholar  in 
them,  however,  and  translated  poetry  from  nearly 
all  of  them.  If  you  look  in  his  complete  works  you 
will  find  a  great  many  poems  marked  as  transla 
tions  from  German,  or  Spanish,  or  Swedish,  or 
some  other  language.  Many  of  these  were  printed 
in  learned  essays  which  he  wrote  and  published 
in  the  North  American  Review. 

He  was  very  popular  as  a  teacher.  He  seemed 
to,  the  boys  like  one  of  themselves,  and  he  was  very 
sympathetic  with  them.  Yet  they  all  respected 
him,  and  treated  him  politely.  They  thought  that 
he  would  some  time  be  a  famous  man,  and  yet  it 
seemed  more  as  if  he  would  be  a  great  scholar, 
than  a  popular  poet  whom  everybody,  boys  and 
girls  as  well  as  grown-up  people,  could  under 
stand  and  like. 


95 
CHAPTER   VII 

THE     "BEING     BEAUTEOUS" 

When  he  had  been  a  professor  at  Bowdoin  Col 
lege  but  little  over  a  year,  Longfellow  married  a 
young  lady  named  Mary  Storer  Potter.  She  was 
the  daughter  of  a  well-known  judge  who  lived  in 
Portland,  and  was  something  of  a  scholar  too.  It 
is  said  she  was  especially  fond  of  mathematics, 
and  had  been  taught  to  calculate  eclipses.  In 
those  days  girls  were  sent  to  school  very  little, 
and  none  of  them  ever  went  to  college.  The  old 
Puritan  fathers  thought  girls  were  better  off  at 
home  doing  housework.  But  Longfellow's  wife 
was  more  fortunate. 

She  was  at  the  same  time  good-looking  and  very 
pleasant  to  every  one,  and  so  the  young  professor 
and  his  young  wife  were  invited  about  a  great  deal, 
and  everybody  thought  them  a  very  happy  pair. 

They  were  very  happy  together  for  two  or  three 
years;  then  Longfellow  was  asked  to  go  to  Har 
vard  College  to  be  professor  of  modern  languages 
there.  To  prepare  for  this  new  and  more  promi- 


96 

nent  position  he  went  to  Europe  again.  Of  course 
his  wife  went  with  him.  They  traveled  about  for 
some  time;  but  she  was  not  well,  and  finally  she 
died. 

Most  of  the  poem  entitled  "  Footsteps  of  Angels  " 
is  about  her,  and  it  shows  just  what  he  thought  of 
her.  It  is  worth  remembering  that  this  is  the 
poet's  own  real  wife  who  died  when  they  were  both 
quite  young.  Here  is  a  part  of  the  poem.  The 
last  stanzas  refer  to  her. 

When  the  hours  of  day  are  numbered, 

And  the  voices  of  the  Night 
Wake  the  better  soul,  that  slumbered, 

To  a  holy,  calm  delight ; 

Ere  the  evening  lamps  are  lighted, 
And,  like  phantoms  grim  and  tall, 

Shadows  from  the  fitful  firelight 
Dance  upon  the  parlor  wall ; 

Then  the  forms  of  the  departed 

Enter  at  the  open  door; 
The  beloved,  the  true-hearted, 

Come  to  visit  me  once  more; 


97 

And  with  them  the  Being  Beauteous, 
Who  unto  my  youth  was  given, 

More  than  all  things  else  to  love  me, 
And  is  now  a  saint  in  heaven. 


With  a  slow  and  noiseless  footstep 
Comes  that  messenger  divine, 

Takes  the  vacant  chair  beside  me, 
Lays  her  gentle  hand  in  mine. 

And  she  sits  and  gazes  at  me, 
With  those  deep  and  tender  eyes, 

Like  the  stars,  so  still  and  saint-like, 
Looking  downward  from  the  skies. 

Uttered  not,  yet  comprehended, 
Is  the  spirit's  voiceless  prayer, 

Soft  rebukes,  in  blessings  ended, 
Breathing  from  her  lips  of  air. 


Oh,  though  oft  depressed  and  lonely, 
All  my  fears  are  laid  aside, 

If  I  but  remember  only 

Such  as  these  have  lived  and  died! 


98 
CHAPTER   VIII 

THE    CRAIGIE    HOUSE 

Longfellow  came  back  from  Europe  and  was 
installed  as  professor  of  modern  languages  and 
belles-lettres  at  Harvard  College,  in  the  beautiful 
town  of  Cambridge,  two  miles  from  Boston.  Soon 
after  he  began  his  life  there  he  went  to  live  at  the 
Craigie  House,  which  has  become  so  famous  as  the 
home  of  Longfellow  that  it  deserves  a  little  descrip 
tion. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Longfellow  was  now 
a  widower  without  children,  his  wife  having  died 
during  his  second  journey  to  Europe.  When  he 
came  to  settle  in  Cambridge  he  was  attracted  by 
the  spacious  rooms  and  the  quiet  and  aristocratic 
air  of  the  Craigie  House,  famous  as  the  head 
quarters  of  Washington  when  he  was  in  Cambridge 
as  commander-in-chief  during  the  Revolutionary 
War.  George  William  Curtis  has  told  the  story 
of  Longfellow's  first  visit  to  this  house  and  how  he 
came  to  live  there,  and  we  give  it  here  very  nearly 
in  Mr.  Curtis's  own  words. 


99 

In  the  summer  of  1 83 7,  a  young  man  passed  down 
the  elm-shaded  walk  that  separated  the  old  Craigie 
House  from  the  high  road.  Reaching  the  door  he 
paused  to  observe  the  huge  old-fashioned  brass 
knocker  and  the  quaint  handle,  relics,  evidently, 
of  an  epoch  of  colonial  state.  To  his  mind,  how 
ever,  the  house,  and  these  signs  of  its  age,  were 
not  interesting  from  the  romance  of  antiquity 
alone,  but  from  their  association  with  the  early  days 
of  our  Revolution,  when  General  Washington, 
after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  had  his  headquar 
ters  in  the  mansion.  Had  his  hand,  perhaps,  lifted 
the  same  latch,  lingering,  as  he  pressed  it,  in  a 
whirl  of  myriad  emotions?  Had  he,  too,  paused 
in  the  calm  summer  afternoon,  and  watched  the 
silver  gleam  of  the  broad  river  in  the  meadows, 
the  dreamy  blue  of  the  Milton  hills  beyond?  And 
had  the  tranquillity  of  that  landscape  penetrated 
his  heart  with  "the  sleep  that  is  among  the  hills," 
and  whose  fairest  dream  to  him  was  a  hope  now 
realized  in  the  peaceful  prosperity  of  his  country? 

He  was  ushered  in  and  found  himself  face  to 
face  with  Mrs.  Craigie,  a  good  old  lady  who  had 


IOO 


seen  better  days.      He  asked  if  there  was  a  room 
vacant  in  the  house. 

"I  lodge  no  students, "  was  her  reply.  Long 
fellow  was  so  young-looking  she  took  him  to  be 
a  student. 

"I  am  not  a  student,"  answered  the  visitor,  "but 
a  professor  in  the  university. " 

"A  professor?"  she  inquired.  She  thought  a 
professor  ought  to  be  dressed  like  a  clergyman. 

"Professor  Longfellow,"  continued  the  guest, 
introducing  himself. 

"Ah!  that  is  different,"  said  the  lady,  her 
features  slightly  relaxing,  as  if  professors  were 
naturally  harmless  and  she  need  no  longer  barri 
cade  herself  behind  a  stern  gravity  of  demeanor. 
"I  will  show  you  what  there  is." 

She  preceded  the  professor  upstairs,  and  going 
down  the  hall  she  stopped  at  each  door,  opened  it, 
permitted  him  to  perceive  its  delightful  fitness  for 
his  purpose,  then  quietly  closed  the  door,  observ 
ing,  "You  cannot  have  that."  The  professorial 
eyes  glanced  restlessly  around  the  fine  old-fashioned 
points  of  the  mansion,  marked  the  wooden  carvings, 


IOI 

the  air  of  opulent  respectability  in  the  past,  which 
corresponds  in  New  England  to  the  impression  of 
ancient  nobility  in  Old  England,  and  wondered  if 
he  were  not  to  be  permitted  to  have  a  room  at  all. 
The  old  lady  at  length  opened  the  door  of  the 
southeast  corner  room  in  the  second  story;  and 
while  the  guest  looked  wistfully  in  and  awaited 
the  customary  ''You  cannot  have  that,"  he  was 
agreeably  surprised  by  hearing  that  he  might 
have  it. 

The  room  was  upon  the  front  of  the  house  and 
overlooked  the  meadows  to  the  river.  It  had  an 
atmosphere  of  fascinating  repose,  in  which  the 
young  man  at  once  felt  at  home. 

"This,  "said  the  lady,  "  was  Washington's  cham 
ber." 

Here  Longfellow  lived  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 
He  was  merely  a  lodger  in  one  of  the  rooms  until 
he  married  the  second  time,  six  years  after  first 
going  there.  On  his  marriage  his  wife's  father,  Mr. 
Nathan  Appleton,  who  was  a  rich  old  gentleman, 
bought  the  house  and  gave  it  to  him  as  a  wedding 
present,  and  also  gave  him  the  lot  opposite,  so 


IO2 


that  no  one  should  ever  build  a  house  that  would 
shut  off  his  view  of  the  river  Charles. 

It  was  the  view  from  the  front  of  this  house  that 
inspired  the  poet  to  write  that  beautiful  poem,  "To 
the  River  Charles."  How  sweet  and  suggestive 
the  opening  verses,  which  note  that  he  wrote  the 
poem  four  years  after  he  moved  into  the  Craigie 
House ! 

River!  that  in  silence  windest 

Through  the  meadows,  bright  and  free, 

Till  at  length  thy  rest  thou  findest 
In  the  bosom  of  the  sea ! 

Four  long  years  of  mingled  feeling, 

Half  in  rest,  and  half  in  strife, 
I  have  seen  thy  waters  stealing 

Onward,  like  the  stream  of  life. 

Thou  hast  taught  me,  Silent  River! 

Many  a  lesson,  deep  and  long; 
Thou  hast  been  a  generous  giver ; 

I  can  give  thee  but  a  song. 

It  may  be  said  that  Joseph  Worcester,  who 
wrote  Worcester's  Dictionary,  had  once  lived  in 
this  house,  and  Miss  Sally  Lowell,  an  aunt  of 


103 

James  Russell  Lowell,  as  well  as  Jared  Sparks,  who 
wrote  a  great  life  of  Washington  and  was  president 
of  Harvard  College.  Mr.  Sparks  and  Edward 
Everett  both  brought  their  wives  there  when  they 
were  married. 

It  seemed  that  Longfellow  was  always  getting 
into  famous  houses.  When  he  was  at  Bowdoin 
College  he  lived  in  the  house  in  which  "  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin  "  was  afterward  written.  It  is  said  that 
Talleyrand,  the  famous  French  diplomat,  and  the 
Duke  of  Kent,  Queen  Victoria's  father,  had  been 
entertained  at  dinner  at  the  Craigie  House  when  it 
belonged  to  the  original  owner,  Colonel  John  Vassal. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE    FIVE     OF    CLUBS 

Now  began  the  finest  years  of  Longfellow's  life. 
It  was  in  the  early  years  at  the  Craigie  House  that 
he  wrote  the  ' '  Psalm  of  Life  "  and  most  of  his 
other  world-famous  and  world-loved  poems,  and  it 
was  here  that  he  enjoyed  his  best  friendships, 


104 

When  he  first  came  to  Cambridge  to  see  about 
accepting  the  professorship,  he  was  introduced  to 
Charles  Sumner,  the  great  lawyer,  orator,  and 
statesman,  then  a  young  man  beginning  to  prac 
tice  law  in  Boston.  The  introduction  took  place  in 
Professor  Felton's  rooms,  who  was  also  about  the 
same  age,  that  is,  under  thirty,  and  who  as  a  Greek 
scholar  and  the  writer  of  Greek  textbooks  has 
become  famous.  Felton  was  a  big,  good-natured 
fellow;  and  he  and  Charles  Sumner  at  once  took  a 
fancy  to  Longfellow.  As  soon  as  the  poet  was 
settled  in  his  new  home  a  club  was  formed,  con 
sisting  of  Longfellow,  Sumner,  Felton,  George  S. 
Hillard  ( Sumner's  law  partner),  and  Henry  R. 
Cleveland,  who  was  also  a  teacher.  These  five, 
who  called  themselves  "  The  Five  of  Clubs, "  met 
usually  every  Saturday  afternoon  in  Longfellow's 
room,  sometimes  in  Felton's,  and  occasionally  in  the 
law  offices  of  Sumner  and  •  Hillard  in  Boston. 
They  were  all  ambitious,  all  good  fellows  who 
met  for  a  ' '  feast  of  reason, "  but  who  nevertheless 
knew  how  to  have  a  royal  good  time.  These  meet 
ings  were  kept  up  regularly  for  several  years. 


It  was  about  this  time  that  Longfellow's  friend 
ship  for  Hawthorne  began. 

There  were  many  other  famous  people  here, 
too,  with  whom  Longfellow  formed  life-long  friend 
ships.  Holmes  was  becoming  known  as  a  young 
poet  as  well  as  medical  professor  in  Harvard  Col 
lege,  and  Lowell,  then  a  boy,  was  soon  to  come 
upon  the  scene,  and  at  last  to  take  Longfellow's 
professorship  when  Longfellow  should  resign. 

Charles  Sumner  was  destined  to  be  one  of  the 
great  antislavery  agitators,  and  it  was  chiefly  to 
his  influence  that  we  owe  Longfellow's  poems  on 
slavery.  Longfellow  was  not  of  a  very  fiery  nature. 
He  did  not  get  excited  even  in  those  hot  times 
before  the  war,  and  Sumner  had  to  urge  him  a 
long  time  before  he  composed  the  poems  entitled 
"The  Slave's  Dream,"  "The  Slave  in  the  Dismal 
Swamp,"  and  others  on  slavery. 

Emerson  was  also  one  of  his  friends,  and  so 
were  several  others  among  those  who  started  the 
Brook  Farm  experiment.  These  people  had  taken  a 
farm,  and  all  had  gone  to  live  together  on  it,  each 
doing  a  little  work,  and  all  doing  a  great  deal  of 


io6 

talking.  Some  of  Emerson's  friends  rather  disliked 
Longfellow  because  he  took  no  interest  in  this 
scheme,  which  proved  a  terrible  failure.  While 
he  was  intimate  with  the  Brook  Farm  people,  and 
always  friendly  as  far  as  listening  to  them  was  con 
cerned,  he  kept  on  the  even  tenor  of  his  ways  quite 
unmoved  by  their  arguments. 


CHAPTER   X 

LONGFELLOW    BECOMES    A    FAMOUS    POET 

When  Longfellow  went  to  live  in  Cambridge  he 
was  just  thirty  years  old.  He  had  not  then  writ 
ten  any  of  the  poems  that  are  famous  to-day,  but 
he  began  at  once  to  produce  most  of  those  that  we 
love  best.  A  good  many  of  them  were  sent  to  the 
Knickerbocker  Magazine.  One  of  them  was  the 
' '  Psalm  of  Life, "  for  which  he  was  promised 
five  dollars,  which,  however,  was  never  paid.  him. 
A  poem  then  called  * '  Floral  Astrology, "  but  now 
known  as  ( '  Flowers, "  was  the  first  to  have  his  full 


name  attached — ( 'Harvard  College,  H.  W.  Long 
fellow."  The  '  'Psalm  of  Life"  was  signed  sim 
ply  ' '  L. "  Both  of  these  poems  and  « '  The  Reaper 
and  the  Flowers  "  (  published  in  the  same  magazine 
in  the  same  way,  at  the  same  price,  which  was 
never  paid)  had  been  copied  into  hundreds  of  news 
papers  and  were  public  favorites  without  the  author's 
being  in  the  least  known.  His  friends  knew 
Longfellow  wrote  the  poems,  but  the  public  did 
not. 

His  cousin,  John  Owen,  kept  a  bookstore  in 
Cambridge.  One  day  Owen  went  to  him  and  told 
him  he  ought  to  have  some  of  his  poems  printed 
in  a  little  volume,  and  with  his  name.  Longfellow 
objected  to  having  his  name  appear,  though  he 
thought  it  might  be  a  good  idea  to  have  the  poems 
published  if  a  publisher  could  be  found.  His 
cousin  said  he  should  like  to  publish  them;  to  this 
Longfellow  assented,  but  for  some  time  refused 
to  have  his  name  appear.  At  last  he  said,  '  'Well, 
bring  them  out  in  your  own  way!"  That  meant, 
with  his  name  on  the  title  page. 

That  little  volume,     entitled     "  Voices    of     the 


io8 

Night,"  and  including  the  poems  still  printed  in 
Longfellow's  collected  works  under  that  title,  was 
published  in  1839,  when  Longfellow  was  thirty-two 
years  old.  It  contained  the  "  Psalm  of  Life," 
' 'The  Reaper  and  the  Flowers,"  "The  Light  of 
Stars, "  ' '  Footsteps  of  Angels, "  <  <  Flowers, "  '  '  The 
Beleaguered  City,"  and  "Midnight  Mass  to  the 
Dying  Year."  There  were  also  some  transla 
tions,  and  a  few  of  the  poems  he  had  published 
while  in  college. 

That  book  made  Longfellow  famous  as  a  poet. 
A  few  critics  found  fault  with  it,  but  not  many,  and 
hundreds  of  others  liked  it  and  praised  it.  Long 
fellow  himself  tells  a  pretty  story  of  the  ' '  Psalm 
of  Life."  (<  I  was  once  riding  in  London,"  said  he, 
' '  when  a  laborer  approached  the  carriage  and 
asked,  '  Are  you  the  writer  of  the  ' '  Psalm  of 
Life?"  'I  am.'  'Will  you  allow  me  to  shake 
hands  with  you?  '  We  clasped  hands  warmly. 
The  carriage  passed  on,  and  I  saw  him  no  more; 
but  I  remember  that  as  one  of  the  most  gratifying 
compliments  I  ever  received,  because  it  was  so 
sincere." 


109 

In  a  published  letter  from  Charles  Sumner,  there 
is  another  touching  story  of  the  power  this  wonder 
ful  poem  possesses  over  men. 

A  man  who  had  been  very  unlucky,  an  old  class 
mate  of  Sumner's,  went  to  his  office  to  prove  some 
debts  in  bankruptcy.  Sumner  asked  him  what  he 
read.  He  replied  that  he  read  very  little;  that  he 
hardly  found  anything  that  was  written  from  the 
heart  and  was  really  true.  ' '  Have  you  read  Long 
fellow's  Hyperion?"  Sumner  asked  him.  "Yes," 
he  replied,  ' '  and  I  admire  it  very  much ;  I  think 
it  a  very  great  book."  He  then  added  in  a  very 
solemn  manner,  ' '  I  think  I  may  say  that  Longfel 
low's  '  Psalm  of  Life  '  saved  me  from  suicide.  I 
first  found  it  on  a  scrap  of  newspaper,  in  the 
hands  of  two  Irish  women,  soiled  and  worn ;  and  I 
was  at  once  touched  by  it. " 

The  Chinese  translator  and  noted  scholar,  Tung 
Tajen,  a  great  admirer  of  Longfellow,  sent  the 
poet  a  Chinese  fan,  upon  which  was  inscribed  in 
Chinese  characters  a  translation  of  the  ' '  Psalm  of 
Life."  The  fan  is  one  of  the  folding  kind,  and  the 
characters  are  inscribed  on  it  in  vertical  columns. 


no 

An  Englishman  serving  on  the  staff  of  the  Amer 
ican  minister  in  China  found  this  beautiful  poem 
in  Chinese  and  translated  it  back  into  English,  not 
knowing  that  it  had  been  written  originally  in  Eng 
lish.  Here  is  a  verse  of  the  translation  he  made. 
You  will  scarcely  recognize  the  familiar — 

Tell  me  not,  in  mournful  numbers, 
!    Life  is  but  an  empty  dream ! 
For  the  soul  is  dead  that  slumbers, 
And  things  are  not  what  they  seem. 

AS    TRANSLATED    FROM    THE    CHINESE. 

Do  not  manifest  your  discontent  in  a  piece  of  verse : 

A  hundred  years  (of  life)  are,  in  truth,  as  one  asleep  (so 

soon  are  they  gone) ; 
The  short  dream  (early  death),  the  long  dream   (death 

after  long  life),  alike   are  dreams  (so  little  is  the 

body  concerned ;  after  death) 
There  still  remains  the  spirit  (which  is  able  to)  fill  the 

universe. 

The  words  in  parenthesis  were  not  in  the  Chinese 
and  the  translator  supplied  them  to  complete  the 
sense  in  English. 


Ill 


CHAPTER   XI 

HOW    SOME    OF    THE    GREAT    POEMS    WERE    WRITTEN 

We  have  already  often  spoken  of  the  *  'Psalm  of 
Life, "  perhaps  the  greatest  poem  Longfellow  ever 
wrote.  He  composed  it  in  his  room  at  the  Craigie 
House,  which  had  been  Washington's  chamber. 
The  death  of  his  young  wife  had  afflicted  him 
deeply,  and  one  day  as  he  sat  between  two  win 
dows,  looking  sadly  out,  this  poem  came  into  his 
mind  and  he  wrote  it.  For  a  long  time  no  one 
knew  of  its  existence,  and  it  was  not  until  many 
months  later  that  he  sent  it  to  be  published.  "The 
Reaper  and  the  Flowers"  was  written  in  much  the 
same  way,  and  "The  Light  of  Stars"  was  com 
posed  on  a  serene  and  beautiful  summer  evening, 
exactly  suggestive  of  the  poem. 

Longfellow  himself  tells  how  "The  Wreck  of 
the  Hesperus"  was  written.  Says  he: 

'  'This  is  one  of  the  poems  which  I  like  to  recall. 
It  floats  in  my  mind  again  and  again,  whenever  I 
read  of  some  of  our  frightful  storms  on  the  coast. 
Away  back  in  the  year  when  the  'Voices  of  the 


I  12 

Night'  was  published,  in  the  closing  month  of  the 
year,  the  New  England  coast  was  lashed  by  a 
terrible  tempest:  and  there  were  numerous  ship 
wrecks  recorded.  I  remember  reading  in  the 
newspapers  one  day  of  the  loss  of  a  schooner  on 
the  reef  of  Norman's  Woe,  called  'The  Hesperus.' 
Norman's  Woe  is,  as  you  are  aware,  a  frowning 
mass  of  rocks,  surrounded  by  the  ocean,  not  far 
from  Gloucester.  It  occurred  to  me  to  write  a 
ballad,  which  I  did  some  days  afterwards,  while  I 
was  sitting  alone  one  night  by  the  fire  in  the  room 
above." 

The  fact  is,  after  writing  part  of  it  he  went  to 
bed,  and  being  unable  to  sleep,  got  up  and  wrote 
the  remainder. 

"Excelsior"  probably  stands  next  to  the  "Psalm 
of  Life"  as  a  popular  favorite.  One  evening,  also 
in  that  chamber  of  Washington's  at  the  Craigie 
House,  after  he  had  been  at  a  party,  Longfellow 
caught  sight  of  this  word  on  a  torn  piece  of  news 
paper.  Lying  near  was  a  letter  from  Charles 
Sumner,  and  immediately  he  began  to  write  on  the 
back  of  this,  crowding  the  stanzas  in  as  best  he 


"3 

could.  Later  he  carefully  rewrote  the  poem,  and 
changed  it  in  many  parts.  The  next  time  Sumner 
visited  the  Craigie  House  he  was  shown  the  letter, 
and  he  asked  to  have  it  back.  Longfellow  gave  it 
him,  and  Sumner  always  kept  it  as  a  treasure.  When 
he  died  he  left  it  by  will  to  Harvard  College. 

Once  in  answer  to  a  letter  Longfellow  gave  the 
following  explanation  of  the  meaning  of  the 
poem: 

'  'My  intention  in  writing  it  was  no  more  than  to 
display,  in  a  series  of  pictures,  the  life  of  a  man  of 
genius,  resisting  all  temptations,  laying  aside  all 
fears,  heedless  of  all  warnings,  and  pressing  right 
on  to  accomplish  his  purpose.  His  motto  is  'Ex 
celsior  ' — higher.  He  passes  through  the  Alpine 
village,  through  the  rough,  cold  paths  of  the  world, 
where  the  peasants  cannot  understand  him,  and 
where  his  watchword  is  '  an  unknown  tongue. '  He 
disregards  the  happiness  of  domestic  peace,  and 
sees  the  glaciers — his  fate — before  him.  He  dis 
regards  the  warnings  of  the  old  man's  wisdom  and 
the  fascinations  of  woman's  love.  He  answers  to 
all,  'Higher  yet!'  The  monks  of  St.  Bernard  are 


the  representatives  of  religious  forms  and  cere 
monies;  and  with  their  oft-repeated  prayer  mingles 
the  sound  of  his  voice,  telling  them  there  is  some 
thing  higher  than  forms  or  ceremonies.  Filled 
with  these  aspirations,  he  pushes  forward;  and  the 
voice  heard  in  the  air  is  the  promise  of  immortality 
and  progress  ever  upward,  without  having  reached 
the  perfection  he  longed  for." 

"The  Village  Blacksmith"  is  another  poem  with 
a  history.  It  will  be  remembered  that  we  have 
already  said  that  Longfellow's  great-grandfather 
was  a  blacksmith.  The  ' '  village  smithy"  '  'under 
a  spreading  chestnut  tree  " — the  one  about  which 
Longfellow  wrote  the  poem,  though  his  grandfather 
was  never  there — stood  on  Brattle  Street,  in  Cam 
bridge.  After  a  time  it  had  to  be  removed.  Some 
of  the  branches  were  cut  off  the  chestnut  tree, 
that  a  dwelling-house  might  be  put  up,  and  it 
then  looked  so  ugly  that  the  town  authorities 
ordered  it  to  be  cut  down. 

This  made  Longfellow  feel  very  sad.  The  year 
before  he  made  a  sketch  of  the  shop  and  the  tree, 
just  as  they  stood,  and  this  rough  sketch  has  been 


"5 

published.  On  the  morning  the  tree  was  cut  down, 
every  one  crowded  out  to  see  the  choppers  at  work, 
and  gaze  at  the  tree  as  it  tumbled  over. 

On  his  seventy-second  birthday  the  children  of 
Cambridge  presented  Longfellow  with  an  arm-chair 
made  out  of  the  wood  of  the  old  chestnut  tree.  It 
was  a  handsome  chair,  jet  black  and  finely  carved 
with  horse  chestnuts  and  leaves.  Inscribed  around 
it  was  a  verse  from  the  poem: 

And  children  coming  home  from  school 

Look  in  at  the  open  door; 
They  love  to  see  the  flaming  forge, 

And  hear  the  bellows  roar, 
And  catch  the  burning  sparks  that  fly 

Like  chaff  from  a  threshing-floor. 

The  chair  was  upholstered  in  green  leather,  and 
there  was  a  brass  plate  under  the  cushion,  on  which 
was  inscribed: 

<(  To  the  author  of  (  The  Village  Blacksmith,' 
this  chair,  made  from  the  wood  of  the  spreading 
chestnut  tree,  is  presented  as  an  expression  of  grate 
ful  regard  and  veneration  by  the  children  of  Cam- 


n6 

bridge,  who,  with  their  friends,  join  in  the  best 
wishes  and  congratulations  on  this  anniversary, 
Feb.  27,  1879" 

Longfellow  was  very  much  pleased  by  this  and 
wrote  a  poem  to  the  children,  entitled  ' '  From  My 
Arm-chair."  You  may  read  it  in  any  volume  of 
his  poems. 

One  more  poem  of  which  we  must  speak  is 
'  'The  Skeleton  in  Armor. "  Said  Longfellow  once, 
'  'This  ballad  was  suggested  to  me  while  riding  on 
the  seashore  at  Newport.  A  year  or  two  previous 
a  skeleton  had  been  dug  up  at  Fall  River,  clad  in 
broken  and  corroded  armor;  and  the  idea  occurred 
to  me  of  connecting  it  with  the  round  tower  at 
Newport,  generally  known,  hitherto,  as  the  Old 
Windmill,  though  now  claimed  by  the  Danes  as 
a  work  of  their  early  ancestors. " 

When  the  poem  was  written  some  of  Longfel 
low's  friends,  probably  the  members  of  that  *  'Five 
of  Clubs,"  thought  it  was  beneath  his  dignity;  but 
others  were  so  enthusiastic  about  it  that  when  one 
of  them  read  it  aloud  to  him  very  appreciatively 
he  sprang  to  his  feet  and  embraced  him,  and  paid 


no  more  attention  to  the  criticisms.  He  was  think 
ing  about  the  subject,  after  his  visit  to  the  skeleton 
that  had  been  dug  up,  for  more  than  a  year  before 
the  poem  flashed  into  his  mind. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE    POET'S    SECOND    MARRIAGE 

You  will  remember  that  at  the  time  his  first 
wife  died  Longfellow  was  in  Holland.  For  a  long 
time  after  that  he  kept  very  much  secluded,  and 
in  the  ' '  Footsteps  of  Angels  "  we  have  seen  how 
deeply  the  thought  of  his  first  wife  was  impressed 
on  his  memory.  But  while  he  was  traveling  in 
Switzerland  the  year  after  her  death,  he  met  Mr. 
Nathan  Appleton,  a  rich  man  of  Boston  who  was 
traveling  with  his  family.  His  daughter  Frances 
Elizabeth  was  very  beautiful  and  had  many  admir 
ers.  Perhaps  Longfellow  fell  in  love  with  her  then, 
but  if  he  did,  it  was  doubtless  because  she  seemed 
very  cold  toward  him. 


u8 

When  he  got  back  'to  Cambridge  and  was  set 
tled  in  the  Craigie  House,  he  wrote  a  sort  of  novel 
entitled  "  Hyperion,"  which,  like  (<  Outre-Mer", 
described  his  journeyings  in  Europe,  but  which 
also  had  a  romantic  love  story,  in  which  most 
people  thought  that  the  hero,  Paul  Flemming,  a 
young  American  man  of  letters,  was  Longfellow 
himself  and  the  heroine,  Mary  Ashburton,  was 
Miss  Appleton.  In  the  story,  Mary  Ashburton 
refused  Paul  Flemming's  offer  of  marriage.  It  is 
not  probable,  however,  that  Longfellow  said  any 
thing  about  love  at  that  time;  but  when  the  novel 
was  published  and  became  popular  it  was  whis 
pered  about  that  the  young  lady  was  very  indignant. 

Nevertheless,  the  Appletons  and  Longfellow  had 
had  a  very  pleasant  time  together  in  Europe. 
Once  they  stopped  at  the  hotel  called  ' '  The 
Raven."  It  was  in  the  town  of  Zurich.  First 
Mr.  Appleton  wrote  his  name  in  the  register  with 
some  compliment  to  the  house.  Then  the  land 
lord  presented  a  very  long  bill,  which  made  Mr. 
Appleton  angry  and  he  was  vexed  because  he  had 
written  something  complimentary  to  the  house. 


H9 

' '  But  I  have  not  written  my  name, "  said  Mr. 
Longfellow;  "and,  if  you  will  allow  me,  I  will 
treat  the  innkeeper  as  he  deserves. " 

He  took  the  register,  and  this  is  what  he  wrote 
in  it: 

Beware  of  the  Raven  of  Zurich! 

'Tis  a  bird  of  omen  ill, 
With  a  noisy  and  unclean  nest, 
And  a  very,  very  long  bill. 

Longfellow  went  home  first,  and  for  six  or  seven 
years  lived,  as  we  have  seen,  in  Cambridge;  but 
later  he  often  visited  Pittsfield,  where  the  Apple- 
ton  summer  mansion  was  and  where  Miss  Frances 
Elizabeth  was  staying,  and  there  she  finally  con 
sented  to  be  his  wife.  They  were  married,  and 
Mr.  Appleton  bought  the  Craigie  House  and  pre 
sented  it  to  them  to  keep  house  in. 

Longfellow  had  five  children,  two  sons  and 
three  daughters.  When  the  Appletons  lived  at 
Lynn,  one  of  the  sons,  Charles,  was  tipped  over 
while  in  a  sailboat  and  of  course  got  soaking  wet. 
In  place  of  his  shoes  Mr.  Appleton  gave  him  a 
pair  of  old  slippers.  Longfellow  returned  them 


I2O 

later  with    this    parody    of   his   own    "Psalm    of 
Life  "  : 

Slippers  that  perhaps  another, 

Sailing  o'er  the  Bay  of  Lynn, 
A  forlorn  or  shipwrecked  nephew, 

Seeing,  may  purloin  again. 

His  daughters,  who  became  the  comfort  of  his 
old  age,  are  beautifully  referred  to  in  the  poem 
called  "The  Children's  Hour"  : 

I  hear  in  the  chamber  above  me 

The  patter  of  little  feet, 
The  sound  of  a  door  that  is  opened, 

And  voices  soft  and  sweet. 

From  my  study  I  see  in  the  lamp  light, 

Descending  the  broad  hall  stair, 
Grave  Alice,  and  laughing  Allegra, 

And  Edith  with  golden  hair. 

In  1 86 1,  twenty  years  before  the  poet  himself 
died,  Mrs.  Longfellow  was  burned  to  death.  She 
was  sitting  at  her  library  table  amusing  her  two 
youngest  children  by  making  seals.  A  bit  of  the 
burning  wax  fell  on  her  light  gauze  dress,  which 
was  in  a  moment  all  aflame.  She  cried  out,  and 


121 


Longfellow  came  running  from  the  next  room  and 
threw  a  rug  about  her;  but  she  was  so  burned  that 
she  soon  died,  though  several  doctors  came  almost 
immediately.  Longfellow  himself  was  also  fright 
fully  burned,  but  not  dangerously. 

This,  and  the  death  of  his  other  wife,  were  the 
two  great  sorrows  of  his  life.  Except  for  these 
two  misfortunes,  it  would  seem  as  though  he  were 
always  fortunate,  living,  as  it  were,  in  a  bed  of 
roses — always  successful,  never  poor,  never  discon 
tented  with  his  lot.  But  after  the  death  of  his 
second  wife  he  was  very  gloomy  for  a  long  time. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  sadness  of  the  deaths 
of  both  wives  made  him  write  some  of  his  best 
poems. 

Three  years  after  the  death  of  Mrs.  Longfellow, 
Hawthorne  died. 

Longfellow  wrote  a  beautiful  poem  called  ' l  Haw 
thorne,"  which  closes  with  this  stanza: 

Ah !  who  shall  lift  that  wand  of  magic  power, 

And  the  lost  clew  regain? 
The  unfinished  window  in  Aladdin's  tower? 

Unfinished  must  remain', 


122 


CHAPTER   XIII 

EVANGELINE,     HIAWATHA,    AND    THE    COURTSHIP 
OF    MILES    STANDISH 

After  his  first  marriage  we  have  seen  that  Long 
fellow  wrote  his  most  famous  short  poems.  After 
his  second  marriage  he  wrote  his  most  famous  long 
poems.  The  first  was  ' '  Evangeline. "  It  was 
published  in  1847,  four  years  after  his  marriage; 
but  he  had  been  a  long  time  writing  it.  He  once 
wrote,  ' '  I  had  the  fever  burning  a  long  time  in  my 
brain  before  I  let  my  hero  take  it.  *  Evangeline ' 
is  so  easy  for  you  to  read,  because  it  was  so  hard 
for  me  to  write." 

The  story  of  the  Acadians  is  a  familiar  one. 
Acadia  was  the  French  name  for  Nova  Scotia. 
But  after  the  French  had  settled  there  the  English 
claimed  the  land  as  having  been  discovered  by 
John  Cabot.  There  was  much  fighting  between 
the  French  and  English  over  the  disputed  ground, 
and  finally  the  English  made  a  settlement  of  their 
own  at  Halifax ;  but  the  country  villages  were 
made  up  mostly  of  the  French.  At  last  the  rights 


I23 

of  the  English  to  the  territory  were  acknowledged 
by  the  French  government;  but  in  the  treaty  that 
was  made  it  was  provided  that  the  French  settlers 
should  not  be  obliged  to  pay  taxes  or  take  up  arms 
against  their  fellow  Frenchmen.  Most  of  them 
also  refused  to  take  the  customary  oath  of  alle 
giance  to  the  King  of  England. 

To  make  up  for  the  loss  of  this  territory  the 
French  erected  fortifications  at  Louisburg  and 
Cape  Breton,  and  they  encouraged  the  Indians  to 
keep  up  a  raiding  warfare  on  the  English  settle 
ments.  In  this  border  warfare  the  English 
claimed  that  the  French  ' '  neutrals "  (as  the 
Acadians  were  called)  acted  as  spies  and  stirred  up 
the  Indians  to  revenge. 

At  last  in  1755,  a  few  years  before  the  Ameri 
can  Revolution,  the  colony  of  Massachusetts  pro 
posed  an  expedition  against  Acadia,  and  the  British 
government  fitted  it  out,  They  captured  the 
neighboring  French  forts,  and  all  the  American 
people  rejoiced  at  the  easy  victory.  Then  came 
the  question,  What  should  they  do  with  those 
treacherous  "  neutrals, "  who  were  British  subjects 


124 

though  they  would  not  swear  allegiance  to  Great 
Britain,  and  in  heart  and  act  remained  loyal  to 
France  after  France  had  been  beaten  off  the 
ground. 

' '  Scatter  them  through  all  the  British  colonies!  " 
ordered  the  governor. 

Accordingly,  eighteen  thousand  of  them  were 
shipped  off  wherever  it  happened  to  be  convenient 
to  send  them,  and  in  such  haste  that  families  were 
separated,  mothers  and  children  parted,  lovers  torn 
from  each  other,  and  all  thrown  into  a  new  world 
without  money  or  property  of  any  kind;  for  their 
houses  and  barns  were  burned,  their  crops  de 
stroyed,  their  money  and  goods  confiscated.  It 
was  a  horrible  retribution  for  a  very  natural  and 
simple-mined  loyalty  to  their  own  native  land 
and  government. 

A  friend  of  Hawthorne's  heard  a  story  of  a  young 
couple  who  were  about  to  be  married  on  the  day 
the  proclamation  was  made;  but  as  the  young  men 
were  separated  from  their  friends  and  families  to 
prevent  their  taking  up  arms  for  their  defense,  the 
two  were  sent  to  different  colonies,  and  spent  the 


12 


rest  of  their  lives  in  a  vain  search  for  each  other. 
At  last  they  meet  in  a  hospital,  where  the  hero  is 
dying.  The  story  was  offered  to  Hawthorne  for  a 
novel,  but  he  did  not  care  for  it.  One  day  when 
the  friend,  Hawthorne,  and  Longfellow  were  dining 
together,  the  story  was  told  again  to  Longfellow 
and  he  was  very  much  touched  by  it,  especially  by 
the  constancy  of  the  heroine. 

' '  If  you  are  not  going  to  use  it  for  a  novel, 
give  it  to  me  for  a  poem,"  said  Longfellow;  and 
Hawthorne  gladly  consented. 

The  heroine  of  the  poem  was  at  first  called 
Gabrielle;  and  the  poet  located  the  scene  of  the 
climax  at  a  poorhouse  in  Philadelphia,  with  the 
charming  surroundings  of  which  he  had  been  fas 
cinated  years  before.  While  waiting  for  the 
sailing  of  the  packet  for  Europe  at  the  time  of  his 
first  voyage,  he  wandered  up  Spruce  street,  where 
his  attention  was  attracted  to  a  large  building  with 
trees  about  it,  inside  of  a  high  enclosure.  He 
walked  along  to  the  great  gate  and  stepped  inside. 
The  charming  picture  of  a  lawn,  flower  beds,  and 
shade  which  it  presented  made  an  impression 


126 

which  never  left '  him.  When  twenty-four  years 
afterward  he  came  to  write  ' '  Evangeline, "  he 
located  the  final  scene  at  this  poorhouse,  and  the 
burial  in  an  old  Catholic  graveyard  not  far  away, 
which  he  had  found  by  chance  on  another  walk  at 
the  same  period. 

His  next  great  poem  was  ' '  Hiawatha. "  For  ten 
years  Longfellow  had  been  thinking  about  writing  an 
Indian  poem.  At  last  a  young  man  who  had  been 
a  pupil  in  one  of  his  classes  came  back  from  the 
West,  where  he  had  been  living  among  the  Indians. 
One  day  while  he  was  dining  with  the  poet,  he 
told  many  of  his  experiences  among  the  red  men. 
Longfellow  was  very  much  impressed,  and  looked 
about  for  a  book  where  he  might  read  old  Indian 
legends.  He  found  that  a  Mr.  Schoolcraft  had 
published  such  a  book,  entitled  '  'Algic  Researches. " 
For  three  years,  he  says,  he  read  and  reread  this 
volume.  At  last  he  began  to  write,  and  composed 
nearly  five  hundred  lines,  when  he  changed 
his  mind  and  destroyed  what  he  had  written. 
He  began  again  and  continued  writing  to  the 
end. 


127 

When  ' '  Hiawatha  "  was  published,  some  critics 
claimed  that  it  was  stolen  from  a  Finnish  poem, 
and  a  great  many  people  said  unpleasant  things 
about  it.  Already  Poe  had  written  very  un 
kindly  of  "  Evangeline,"  as  he  seemed  to  be  jeal 
ous  of  Longfellow's  success.  But  both  ' '  Evange 
line"  and  "  Hiawatha"  soon  became  immensely 
popular,  thousands  of  copies  being  sold  and 
read. 

Two  years  after  "Hiawatha"  appeared,  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  was  started.  Longfellow, 
Holmes,  Whittier,  Emerson,  Prescott  and  others, 
were  called  together  at  a  dinner,  and  Lowell  was 
chosen  editor  of  the  magazine.  After  the  period 
ical  was  started  and  became  so  famous,  the  men 
who  wrote  for  it  met  regularly  once  a  month  at  a 
dinner.  Longfellow  was  a  contributor  and  an 
attendant  at  the  dinners  for  a  long  time. 

The  year  after  the  Atlantic  Monthly  was 
started,  ' '  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish  "  was 
published  as  a  little  volume.  The  poem  professes 
to  be  a  love  poem,  but  the  love  is  not  so  warm  and 
sincere  as  that  in  the  songs  of  Robert  Burns. 


128 

CHAPTER   XIV 

THE  GOOD  OLD  MAN 

Longfellow  was  one  of  the  best-natured  men  in 
the  world.  He  was  always  pleasant  and  obliging 
to  everybody  who  came  to  see  him.  He  wrote 
his  autograph  for  all  the  children  who  asked 
him.  Once  there  was  a  school  celebration  in  his 
honor.  He  was  present  and  made  a  beautiful  little 
speech,  in  which,  among  other  things,  he  thanked 
the  children  of  Cambridge  for  the  arm-chair. 
When  the  exercises  were  over  the  children  crowded 
about  him  and  he  wrote  his  name  in  their  albums 
until  he  could  write  no  more,  his  hand  was  so  tired. 
But  he  told  those  who  had  not  got  his  autograph 
that  he  would  write  it  for  them  if  they  would  come 
around  to  his  house. 

Many  children  went  to  see  him  on  other  occa 
sions,  and  he  was  always  very  kind  to  them.  Every 
body  loved  him. 

We  have  mentioned  many  of  the  men  who  were 
his  friends.  Another  was  Professor  Agassiz,  the 
great  scientist  and  professor  at  Harvard  College, 


129 

who  was  a  warm  and  intimate    friend  of  Longfel 
low's. 

After  a  time  these  friends  began,  one  by  one,  to 
die.  Agassiz  died,  Sumner  died,  and  a  number  of 
others.  Hawthorne  had  died  some  years  before. 

Longfellow  lived  a  sad  life  after  the  terrible  acci 
dent  that  killed  his  wife,  and  was  getting  to  be  a 
very  old  man.  Every  one  tried  to  honor  him.  He 
knew  that  he  was  accounted  the  greatest  poet 
America  had  produced.  His  sons  and  daughters 
were  about  him  and  took  excellent  care  of  him. 
Nevertheless,  he  began  to  weary  of  life  a  little, 
and  longed  to  join  the  dear  ones  who  had  gone 
before. 

It  is  autumn ;  not  without, 

But  within  me  is  the  cold. 
Youth  and  spring  are  all  about ; 
It  is  I  that  have  grown  old. 

He  still  wrote  many  beautiful  poems,  such  as 
the  "Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  "Keramos, "  and 
others.  He  even  wrote  a  poem  on  the  death  of 
Garfield  a  short  time  before  he  himself  died.  But 
none  of  these  poems  became  as  famous  as  those  he 


130 

had  written  in   earlier  years  in  the   prime   of  his 
manhood. 

At  last,  on  the  24th  of  March,  1882,  he  died,  and 
the  whole  country  went  into  mourning  for  him. 

His  soul  to  him  who  gave  it  rose; 
God  lead  it  to  its  long  repose, 

Its  glorious  rest! 

And  though  the  poet's  sun  has  set, 
Its  light  shall  linger  round  us  yet, 

Bright,  radiant,  blest. 


NOTE.— The  thanks  of  the  publishers  are  due  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 
for  their  kind  permission  to  use  selections  from  the  copyrighted  works  of  I,ong- 
fellow. 


THE  STORY  OF 

JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 


WHITTIER 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  QUAKER  OF  THE  OLDEN  TIME 

The  Quaker  of  the  olden  time ! 

How  calm  and  firm  and  true, 
Unspotted  by  its  wrong  and  crime, 

He  walked  the  dark  earth  through! 

The  Quaker,  with  his  broad-brimmed  hat,  his 
queer,  old-fashioned  coat,  and  his  habit  of  saying 
"thee  must"  and  "thee  must  not,  "was  not  only 
an  honest  man,  but  a  good-natured,  sensible 
man  as  well.  The  poet  Whittier  was  a  good 
Quaker,  as  "calm  and  firm  and  true"  as  the 
Quaker  in  his  poem.  He  was  also  fond  of  children, 
and  his  best  poems  are  about  children  and  child 
hood  days. 

It  is  only  a  little  over  two  hundred  years  since 
the  first  Quakers  appeared.  Whittier's  great-great- 


133 


134 

grandfather,  Thomas  Whittier,  was  said  to  be  a 
Huguenot  by  descent.  He  came  from  England, 
however,  as  a  Puritan,  and  held  various  offices  in 
the  Puritan  church  in  Salisbury  and  Haverhill,  in 
northeastern  Massachusetts,  where  he  settled. 

It  happened  that  two  Quakers,  Joseph  Peasley 
and  Thomas  Macy,  who  had  come  to  Haverhill, 
were  arrested  and  fined  for  "exhorting"  on  the 
Lord's  day.  They  did  it  in  their  own  houses;  but 
in  those  Puritan  times,  all  the  exhorting  had  to 
be  done  in  church  by  regular  ministers.  Thomas 
Whittier  thought  these  men  had  been  treated  rather 
unjustly,  and  he  and  others  petitioned  the  legis 
lature,  or  General  Court,  to  pardon  them.  But  the 
old  Puritans  thought  these  petitioners  about  as  bad 
as  the  ' '  heretics"  themselves,  as  the  Quakers  were 
regarded,  and  notified  them  that  they  must  take 
back  their  petition  or  be  punished.  Thomas  Whit 
tier  and  Christopher  Hussey,  though  not  Quakers, 
refused,  and  were  deprived  of  their  right  to  vote, 
or,  as  it  was  called,  "their  rights  as  freemen." 

Thomas  Whittier  was  such  a  good,  sensible  man, 
however,  that  the  people,  although  he  was  sus- 


pended  from  voting,  had  to  ask  him  to  help  them  do 
various  things  in  the  church;  and  after  a  while  the 
General  Court  restored  his  '  'rights  as  a  freeman. " 
He  himself  never  became  a  Quaker,  but  his  son 
married  a  daughter  of  Joseph  Peasley,  and  so  most 
of  the  Whittiers  after  that  were  Quakers.  Yet 
there  were  some  who  were  not;  for  history  tells  of 
a  Colonel  Whittier  about  the  time  of  the  Revolu 
tion.  He  could  not  have  been  a  Quaker,  for  no 
good  Quaker  ever  goes  into  the  army. 

The  Quakers  are  a  peculiar  people.  They  do 
not  believe  in  fighting  or  going  to  war  on  any 
account.  They  are  always  for  peace.  The  poet 
Whittier  was  opposed  to  war,  and  often  wrote 
against  it;  and  he  refused  to  favor  the  Civil  War, 
which  freed  the  slaves,  although  he  had  himself 
been  for  many  years  a  great  anti-slavery  reformer, 
along  with  his  friend  William  Lloyd  Garrison.  But 
he  admits  that  he  had  a  sort  of  diabolical  liking  for 
the  army  and  war,  and  once  he  wrote  a  war  poem 
and  had  it  published  anonymously.  He  thought 
no  one  would  ever  know  who  wrote  it,  for  it  didn't 
§ound  much  like  a  Quaker;  but  when  he  had 


136 

become  an  old  man  some  one  did  find  it  out,  and 
he  had  to  admit  that  he  was  its  author. 

Another  thing  the  Quakers  will  not  do  is  to  swear, 
either  in  a  profane  way,  or  before  a  court  of  justice. 
They  declare  that  the  Scriptures  say,  *  'Swear  not 
at  all,"  and  that  it  is  just  as  wrong  to  swear  in 
court  as  in  anger.  They  are  not  great  talkers ;  and 
in  meeting,  if  no  one  has  anything  to  say  that  is 
worth  saying,  they  think  it  much  better  to  sit  in 
silence  for  an  hour  than  to  listen  to  a  dull  sermon. 

Your  grammars  will  tell  you  that  it  is  just  as 
incorrect  to  say  ' '  thee  is, "  or  '  'thee  must, "  as  it  is 
to  say  "me  is,"  or  "him  ought."  It  seems  strange 
that  most  of  the  Quakers  in  the  world,  from  the 
earliest  time,  should  make  a  grammatical  blunder 
like  this.  Of  course  Whittier,  and  many  others, 
-knew  it  was  not  correct;  but  they  said  that  Quakers 
had  used  this  form  of  speech  from  the  very  first, 
and  they  would  not  try  to  change  the  custom. 

These  queer  people  also  said  they  were  plain, 
sensible  folk,  and  therefore  would  not  cater  to  the 
'  'world  and  the  devil"  by  wearing  fine  clothes.  All 
dressed  in  the  same  way,  in  what  was  called 


137 

Quaker  drab,  the  men  with  broad-brimmed  beaver 
hats,  the  women  with  plain  bonnets  of  black  or 
'  'dove-colored"  silk,  unadorned  with  ribbons  or 
other  ornaments. 

Neither  did  they  have  any  music,  nor  indulge 
themselves  in  any  unnecessary  luxuries.  They 
were  sharp  and  shrewd,  however,  and  as  we 
shall  see  in  the  case  of  Whittier,  did  not  forbear  to 
have  a  little  fun  now  and  then. 

The  Puritans  had  revolted  from  the  Church  of 
England,  and  came  to  America  for  religious  free 
dom.  The  Quakers  had  likewise  revolted  from 
the  established  forms  of  worship,  but  their  belief 
was  very  different  from  that  of  the  Puritans. 

At  first  the  Puritans  in  Massachusetts  thought 
they  would  keep  the  Quakers  out  of  their  colony. 
They  therefore  punished  severely  every  one  who 
dared  to  come  among  them.  They  condemned 
four  of  them  to  death,  and  others  they  whipped  and 
imprisoned  and  banished.  But  these  persecutions 
did  not  prevent  the  Quakers  from  coming  to  Massa 
chusetts,  and  finally  the  Puritans  became  ashamed 
of  their  intolerance,  and  left  them  to  themselves, 


138 


CHAPTER  II 

A  FARMER'S  BOY 

The  first  Thomas  Whittier,  after  he  married, 
built  a  log  house,  not  far  from  the  present  Whittier 
homestead;  but  when  he  grew  old  and  became 
well-to-do  he  put  up  what  was  then  a  fine  house. 
This  was  as  long  ago  as  1688,  or  thereabouts. 

In  this  house,  which  is  still  standing,  the  poet 
John  Greenleaf  Whittier  was  born,  December  17, 
1807.  His  father  was  nearly  fifty  at  the  time  of 
his  birth,  and  twenty-one  years  older  than  his 
mother.  His  grandfather  was  about  the  same 
age  when  his  father  was  born,  and  his  great 
grandfather  and  great-great-grandfather  were 
equally  old  at  the  births  of  their  sons. 

On  his  mother's  side  Whittier  was  descended 
from  a  remarkable  old  preacher  named  Stephen 
Bachiler.  This  man  had  deep-set,  bright  eyes, 
and  handsome  features,  which  were  inherited  by 
most  of  his  descendants,  many  of  whom  became 
famous  men.  One  was  Daniel  Webster,  who 


139 

looked  very  much  indeed  like  Whittier.     Both  had 
the  Bachiler  eye  and  brow. 

New  England  farm  life  is  not  easy  or  pleasant, 
though  Whittier  never  admitted  that  he  didn't 
have  a  first-rate  time  when  he  was  a  boy,  as  you 
may  see  by  reading  '  'Snow-Bound. "  His  father's 
family  had  to  raise  most  of  the  food  they  ate. 
They  had  no  comfortable  sofas,  and  the  chairs 
were  very  straight-backed.  Besides,  they  did  not 
succeed  very  well  in  keeping  warm  in  the  winter. 
As  they  thought  it  was  necessary  to  toughen  them 
selves,  they  went  out  on  very  cold  days  without 
much  clothing  on.  Indeed,  they  probably  had 
but  very  few  warm  clothes.  There  were  no  such 
things  in  those  days  as  heavy  flannels  or  great 
overcoats.  The  cloth  in  their  garments  was  spun 
and  woven  at  home  by  the  mother,  and  she  did 
not  always  get  the  threads  very  close  together. 
So  there  were  a  great  many  spaces  for  the  wind 
to  blow  through.  Of  course  they  had  to  go  to 
meeting  every  First-day  (Sunday),  and  as  there 
were  no  fires  in  the  meeting-house,  they  suffered 
much  from  the  cold  in  winter. 


140 

Even  the  dwelling  houses  were  not  very  warm. 
There  was  only  one  fire,  and  it  was  built  in  a 
chimney-place  so  large  that  there  was  room  for 
benches  inside  the  chimney  next  to  the  fire.  Then 
the  wind  would  come  in  through  the  cracks  and 
crevices;  and  while  it  was  very  hot  before  the  fire 
place,  a  little  way  back  it  was  cold.  It  would  often 
happen  on  cold,  windy  nights  that  their  faces 
would  burn  while  their  backs  were  almost  freezing. 

o 

And  the  bedrooms  were  like  ice-chests,  and  never 
warm  except  in  summer,  when  they  were  sure  to  be 
too  hot.  Whittier  was  sickly  all  the  latter  part  of 
his  life ;  and  he  laid  his  trouble  largely  to  exposure 
in  childhood;  for  he  was  always  delicate.  He  lived 
to  be  very  old,  however,  as  did  all  his  ancestors. 

This  was  the  unpleasant  side  to  his  boyhood;  of 
the  pleasant  side  Whittier  himself  has  told  us.  If 
you  wish  to  know  what  good  times  he  had  in  the 
summer  season,  read  the  "  Barefoot  Boy": 

Blessings  on  thee,  little  man, 
Barefoot  boy  with  cheeks  of  tan !  .   .  . 
From  my  heart  I  give  thee  joy — 
I  was  once  a  barefoot  boy ! 


It  is  only  the  country  boy  who  knows — 

How  the  tortoise  bears  his  shell, 
How  the  woodchuck  digs  his  cell, 
And  the  ground-mole  sinks  his  well ; 
How  the  robin  feeds  her  young, 
How  the  oriole's  nest  is  hung; 
Where  the  whitest  lilies  blow, 
Where  the  freshest  berries  grow, 
Where  the  groundnut  trails  its  vine, 
Where  the  wood-grape's  clusters  shine. 

But  it  is  in  '  'Snow-Bound, "  his  greatest  and  most 
beautiful  poem,  that  we  hear  of  all  the  pleasant 
times  which  the  farm  boy  has  in  winter,  and  also  all 
about  the  members  of  Whittier's  own  family.  He 
begins  the  poem  by  telling  how  the  snowstorm 
came  up,  and  then  goes  on — 

Meanwhile  we  did  our  nightly  chores, — 
Brought  in  the  wood  from  out  of  doors, 
Littered  the  stalls,  and  from  the  mows 
Raked  down  the  herd's-grass  for  the  cows. 

Every  farmer  boy  knows  what  "chores"  are. 
The  fun  came  the  next  morning  when  their  father, 


142 

'  'a  prompt,  decisive  man, "  wasting  no  breath,  said, 
"Boys,  a  path!"  You  must  go  to  the  poem  itself 
to  read  about  the  Aladdin's  cave  they  dug  in  the 
snow,  and  the  other  things  they  did.  "As  night 
drew  on, "  says  the  poet, 

We  piled  with  care  our  nightly  stack 
Of  wood  against  the  chimney  back, — 
The  oaken  log,  green,  huge  and  thick 
And  on  its  top  the  stout  back  stick ; 
The  knotty  forestick  laid  apart, 
And  filled  between  with  curious  art 
The  ragged  brush ;  then,  hovering  near, 
We  watched  the  first  red  blaze  appear, 
Heard  the  sharp  crackle,  caught  the  gleam 
On  whitewashed  wall  and  sagging  beam, 
Until  the  old,  rude-furnished  room, 
Burst  flower-like  into  rosy  bloom.  .  .  . 
Shut  in  from  all  the  world  without, 
We  sat  the  clean- winged  hearth  about 
Content  to  let  the  north  wind  roar 
In  baffled  rage  at  pane  and  door; 
While  the  red  logs  before  us  beat 
The  frost  line  back  with  tropic  heat  ; 
And  ever,  when  a  louder  blast 
Shook  beam  and  rafter  as  it  passed, 


143 

The  merrier  up  its  roaring  draught 
The  great  throat  of  the  chimney  laughed. 
The  house  dog  on  his  paws  outspread 
Laid  to  the  fire  his  drowsy  head, 
The  cat's  dark  silhouette  on  the  wall 
A  couchant  tiger's  seemed  to  fall ; 
And,  for  the  winter  fireside  meet, 
Between  the  andirons'  straddling  feet, 
The  mug  of  cider  simmered  slow. 
The  apples  sputtered  in  a  row, 
And,  close  at  hand,  the  basket  stood 
With  nuts  from  brown  October's  wood 

Whittier  was  nearly  sixty  years  old  when  he 
wrote  this  poem,  and  perhaps  he  had  forgotten 
partly  the  hardships  of  his  boyhood;  but  the  poem 
is  so  great  because  it  is  so  simple  and  natural  and 
true.  It  may  seem  strange  that  the  greatest  work 
of  a  great  poet  is  no  more  than  a  description  of  his 
every-day  home  when  he  was  a  boy.  Whittier 's 
home  was  not  finer  nor  better  than  anybody  else's 
home — than  yours  or  mine;  in  fact,  in  comparison 
with  what  we  have,  it  was  very  poor  indeed.  Yet 
Whittier  made  this  wonderful  poem  about  it.  That 
shows  how  great  a  poet  he  was.  Only  a  great 


144 


poet  could  take  a  barefoot  boy,  or  a  snowstorm,  or 
a  common  farmhouse  and  write  such  beautiful 
verses  about  it.  Think  of  this  carefully,  and  you 
will  come  to  understand  what  good  poetry  really  is. 


CHAPTER  III 

WHIT-TIER'S  FAMILY 

Most  people  are  blessed  with  brothers  and  sisters, 
with  whom  they  grow  up.  First  one  and  then  the 
other  is  sent  away  to  school.  Soon  they  are  all  out 
in  the  world,  earning  livings  for  themselves;  they 
get  married  and  have  families  of  their  own;  and 
before  long  they  seem  to  forget  the  home  of  their 
childhood  But  Whittier  did  not  get  married,  and 
one  of  his  sisters  did  not  marry.  He  lived  on  the 
farm  most  of  the  time  till  he  was  thirty  years 
old,  when  he  moved  with  his  mother  and  sister  to 
Amesbury.  We  are  therefore  more  than  usually 
interested  in  knowing  about  the  members  of  the 
family  in  which  he  was  born. 

First,   there  was  his  father.      He  was  a 


H5 

matter-of-fact  man,  and  did  not  believe  in  poetry; 
and  so,  in  this,  young  Greenleaf  received  very  little 
encouragement  from  him. 

The  encouragement  in  his  poetic  efforts,  which 
the  father  failed  to  give,  he  got  from  his  mother, 
sisters,  and  brother,  who  were  all  proud  of  him. 
His  mother  was  a  dear,  sweet  Quaker  lady,  as 
saintly  as  she  was  lovely.  Her  face  was  full  and 
fair,  and  she  had  fine,  dark  eyes.  She  appreciated 
poetry  and  all  fine  and  delicate  sentiments,  and 
for  fifty  years  she  was  the  guide,  counselor,  and 
friend  of  her  illustrious  son. 

Greenleaf  had  a  brother,  Matthew  Franklin, 
several  years  younger  than  himself,  who  outlived 
every  one  else  in  the  family  except  the  poet.  He 
had  also  two  sisters,  the  eldest  of  the  family,  and 
the  youngest.  The  elder  sister,  Mary,  married 
and  lived  in  Haverhill;  but  the  younger  never  mar 
ried,  and  was  the  poet's  intimate  friend  and  house 
keeper  until  both  were  old.  In  ' '  Snow-Bound  " 
the  reader  will  find  this  beautiful  description  of 
her,  lines  as  sweet  and  beautiful  as  the  poet  ever 
wrote : 


146 

Upon  the  motley-braided  mat 
Our  youngest  and  our  dearest  sat, 
Lifting  her  large,  sweet,  asking  eyes, 
Now  bathed  within  the  fadeless  green 

And  holy  peace  of  Paradise 

I  tread  the  pleasant  paths  we  trod, 
I  see  the  violet-sprinkled  sod 
Whereon  she  leaned,  too  frail  and  weak 
The  hillside  flowers  she  loved  to  seek, 
Yet  following  me  where'er  I  went 
With  dark  eyes  full  of  love's  content. 

And  yet,  dear  heart!  remembering  thee, 

Am  I  not  richer  than  of  old? 
Safe  in  thy  immortality, 

What  change  can  reach  the  wealth  I  hold? 

What  chance  can  mar  the  pearl  and  gold 
Thy  love  hath  left  in  trust  with  me  ? — 
And  when  the  sunset  gates  unbar, 

Shall  I  not  see  thee  waiting  stand, 
And,  white  against  the  evening  star, 

The  welcome  of  thy  beckoning  hand? 

The  poem  '  *  Snow-Bound  "  was  written  perhaps 
as  a  memorial  of  her.  He  and  she  had  been  for 
fifty  years  as  loving  and  fond  as  husband  and 


147 

wife,  but  held  together  by  a  purer,  more  spiritual 
bond. 

She  was  a  poet  like  her  brother;  and  to  this 
day,  in  any  complete  edition  of  Whittier's  poems 
you  will  find,  towards  the  end  of  the  volume, 
''Poems  by  Elizabeth  H.  Whittier, "  which  he 
wished  to  be  always  printed  with  his. 

In  this  family  there  were  two  other  kindly  souls. 
One  was  Uncle  .Moses,  a  brother  of  the  poet's 
father,  ' '  innocent  of  books,  but  rich  in  lore  of 
fields  and  brooks. "  The  other  was  Aunt  Mercy, 
Mrs.  Whittier's  sister: — 

The  sweetest  woman  ever  Fate 
Perverse  denied  a  household  mate, 
Who,    lonely,  homeless,  not  the  less 
Found  peace  in  love's  unselfishness, 
And  welcome  wheresoe'er  she  went. 

Such  was  the  Whittier  family,  all  good  Quakers, 
dressing  in  Quaker  fashion,  and  talking  in  the 
quaint  Quaker  way;  but  they  were  all  cheerful  and 
ready  for  enjoyment,  and  all  were  fond  and  de 
voted  and  gentle  and  ambitious  to  live  well. 


148 


CHAPTER   IV 

STORIES    OF    THE    POET'S    CHILDHOOD 

The  Whittiers  seem  to  have  been  a  simple- 
minded  family.  Some  stories  told  of  the  poet  in 
his  childhood  would  almost  make  you  think  him 
stupid,  but  no  one  seems  ever  to  interpret  them  in 
that  way. 

He  remembered  nothing  that  happened  before 
he  was  six  years  old;  but  about  that  time  he  heard 
that  a  neighboring  farm  had  been  sold  at  auction. 
The  next  morning  he  went  out  and  was  surprised 
to  find  the  land  still  there,  instead  of  a  big  hole  in 
the  ground;  for  he  seemed  to  think  that  after  the 
farm  was  sold  it  would  be  taken  away. 

When  he  was  nine  years  old,  President  Monroe 
visited  Haverhill,  and  happened  to  be  there  on  the 
same  day  that  a  menagerie  came  to  town.  The 
Quaker  boy  was  not  allowed  to  see  either.  He 
thought  he  did  not  care  much  for  the  wild  beasts, 
but  he  would  have  liked  to  see  the  greatest  man  in 
the  United  States.  The  next  day  he  trudged  over 


to  the  village,  hoping  to  see  at  least  some  foot 
prints  that  the  great  man  had  left  behind  him. 
He  found  at  last  the  impressions  of  an  elephant's 
feet  in  the  road,  and  supposing  these  to  be  the 
tracks  of  the  President,  he  followed  them  as  far 
as  he  could  make  them  out.  *  Then  he  went  home 
satisfied  that  he  had  seen  the  footsteps  of  the 
greatest  man  in  the  country. 

5  At  another  time  he  and  his  brother  calculated 
that  if  each  could  lift  the  other  by  his  boot  straps, 
first  one  lifting  and  then  the  other,  they  might  lift 
themselves  up  to  the  ceiling,  and  no  telling  how 
much  higher.  Of  course  when  they  tried  it  they 
didn't  get  very  far. 

In  later  life  he  used  to  tell  a  story  of  how 
children  sometimes  suffer  needlessly,  and  in  ways  of 
which  their  parents  little  dream.  When  he  went  to 
ride  with  his  father,  they  used  to  walk  up  a  certain 
hill,  in  order  to  rest  the  horse.  By  the  side  of  the 
road  there  was  a  gander,  which  had  come  out  from 
a  neighboring  farmyard;  and  he  says  he  would 
rather  in  later  life  have  walked  up  to  a  hostile  can 
non  than  as  a  child  go  by  that  gander.  But  he 


150 

was  ashamed  to  let  his  father  know  his  fear,  and 
so  walked  past  in  an  agony  of  dread. 

There  is  also  told  an  interesting  story  of  an  ox 
named  Old  Butler.  One  day  Greenleaf  went  out 
with  some  salt  for  the  oxen.  He  was  climbing  up 
the  side  of  a  steep  hill  when  Old  Butler,  on  top, 
saw  him,  and  came  plunging  down.  The  hill  was 
so  steep  that  the  ox  could  not  stop,  and  in  a 
moment  he  would  have  crushed  the  young  master; 
but  gathering  himself  together  at  the  right 
moment,  the  creature  by  a  great  effort  leaped 
straight  out  into  the  air  over  the  head  of  the  boy. 
It  was  the  wonderful  intelligence  of  this  ox  that 
saved  young  Greenleaf's  life. 

Another  amusing  story  is  also  told  of  this  ox. 
Once  a  Quaker  meeting  was  being  held  in  the 
kitchen.  Unexpectedly  the  ox  stuck  his  head  in 
at  the  window.  While  a  sweet-voiced  sister  was 
speaking  he  listened  quietly;  but  when  a  loud- 
voiced  brother  began  to  speak,  he  drew  out  his 
head,  flung  up  his  tail,  and  went  off  bellowing. 
This  the  children  thought  very  funny  and  a  good 
joke  on  the  brother. 


CHAPTER  V 

SCHOOL    DAYS 

Brisk  wielder  of  the  birch  and  rule, 
The  master  of  the  district  school 
Held  at  the  fire  his  favored  place. 
Its  warm  glow  lit  a  laughing  face, 
Fresh-hued  and  fair,  where  scarce  appeared 
The  uncertain  prophecy  of  beard. 
He  teased  the  mitten-blinded  cat, 
Played  cross-pins  on  my  uncle's  hat, 
Sang  songs,  and  told  us  what  befalls 
In  classic  Dartmouth's  college  halls. 

A  careless  boy  that  night  he  seemed; 
But  at  his  desk  he  had  the  look 

And  air  of  one  who  wisely  schemed, 
And  hostage  from  the  future  took 
In  trained  thought  and  lore  of  book. 

Large-brained,  clear-eyed — of  such  as  he 

Shall  Freedom's  young  apostles  be. 

— Snow-Bonna 

Until  he  was  nineteen  Whittier  went  only  to  the 


152 

district  school,  and  he  used  to  say  that  in  all  that 
time  only  two  of  the  teachers  were  worth  anything 
at  all.  Both  of  these  were  Dartmouth  students, 
and  are  fairly  well  described  in  the  above  quotation 
from  "  Snow-Bound."  One  was  Joshua  Coffin, 
Whittier's  first  teacher.  He  came  back  again 
some  years  later,  and  often  spent  his  evenings  at 
the  Whittier  homestead.  In  later  years  he  was 
the  poet's  friend  and  helper  in  the  antislavery 
cause. 

Little  Greenleaf  started  to  school  when  he  was 
very  small,  and  before  he  had  learned  his  letters. 
Among  his  poems  is  a  sweet  little  one,  entitled 
"In  School  Days."  He  begins  by  describing  the 
schoolhouse: 

Within,  the  master's  desk  is  seen, 

Deep  scarred  by  raps  official ; 
The  warping  floor,  the  battered  seats, 

The  jack-knife's  carved  initial. 

You  must  read  for  yourself  the  story  of  the  little 
boy  and  the  little  girl,  and  how  the  latter  said; 


153 

"  I  'm  sorry  that  I  spelt  the  word: 

I  hate  to  go  above  you, 
Because,"  — the  brown  eyes  lower  fell, — 
"  Because,  you  see,  I  love  you!" 


Of  books  to  read  they  had  not  many  in  the 
Whittier  household,  and  most  of  them  were  the 
works  of  saintly  Quakers.  The  Bible  was  the 
chief  book,  and  that  they  read  until  they  had  it  by 
heart.  Joshua  Coffin  used  to  bring  various  books 
which  he  had  and  read  them  aloud  to  the  older 
people,  not  paying  much  attention  to  the  boy  of 
fifteen  who  sat  in  the  corner  and  listened.  Once 
he  brought  a  volume  of  Burns's  poems  and  read 
page  after  page,  explaining  the  Scotch  dialect. 
Greenleaf,  then  a  tall,  shy  lad,  listened  spellbound. 
He  had  got  into  what  his  Uncle  Moses  called  his 
'  'stood. "  The  teacher  saw  that  he  was  interested, 
and  offered  to  leave  the  book  with  him.  That  was 
about  the  first  good  poetry  he  had  ever  heard.  It 
kindled  the  fire  of  poetic  genius  in  his  own  mind 
and  heart,  and  he  soon  began  to  write  poetry  him 
self.  But  he  was  only  a  farmer's  lad,  and  writing 


154 

poetry  does  not   come    easy  to  one  in  such  sur 
roundings. 

While  he  was  in  his  teens  he  made  his  first  visit 
to  Boston,  staying  with  a  relative  who  was  post 
master  of  the  city.  You  may  imagine  how  he 
looked,  a  gawky  country  boy,  with  broad-brimmed 
Quaker  hat  and  plain,  homespun  clothes.  But  he 
wore  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  ' '  boughten  but 
tons"  on  his  coat,  and  his  Quaker  hat  had  been 
covered  by  his  Aunt  Mercy  with  drab  velvet. 
These  made  him  feel  very  fine. 

He  was  induced  to  buy  a  copy  of  Shakespeare; 
and  at  the  table  of  his  relative  was  a  brilliant  lady, 
who  was  very  kind  to  him.  He  had  been  warned 
against  the  temptations  of  the  town,  and  you  can 
imagine  how  shocked  he  was  to  find  out  that  this 
fine  lady  was  an  actress.  She  invited  him  to  go  to 
the  theater;  but  he  hastily  declined,  and  was 
almost  ashamed  of  himself  for  having  bought  a 
volume  of  plays,  even  if  they  were  Shakespeare's. 
Somehow  or  other  a  copy  of  one  of  the  Waverley 
novels  came  into  the  Quaker  home,  and  Whittier 
and  his  sister  read  it  together  without  Jetting  their 


155 

parents  know.  They  read  late  into  the  night;  and 
atone  time,  just  as  they  were  getting  to  an  exciting 
part,  the  candle  burned  out  and  they  had  to  go  to 
bed  in  the  dark,  for  it  was  quite  impossible  to  get 
another. 

There  is  a  story  that  Whittier's  first  verses  were 
written  on  the  beam  of  his  mother's  loom.  At  any 
rate  he  wrote  verses  on  his  slate  in  school,  and 
passed  them  around  among  the  scholars.  One 
stanza  his  sister  remembered,  and  repeated  after 
ward  : 

And  must  I  always  swing  the  flail, 
And  help  to  fill  the  milking-pail? 
I  wish  to  go  away  to  school ; 
I  do  not  wish  to  be  a  fool. 

The  desk  on  which  the  poet  wrote  his  first  verses 
was  built  by  that  original  Thomas  Whittier,  more 
than  a  hundred  years  before  Greenleaf  was  born. 
It  stood  in  the  kitchen  for  many  years;  then  it  was 
packed  away.  But  a  few  years  before  Whittier 
died,  a  niece  of  his  had  it  taken  out  and  repaired, 
and  he  used  it  until  the  end  of  his  life. 


156 

In  those  old  days  his  sister  Mary  thought  his 
verses  exceedingly  fine,  quite  as  good  as  those  she 
read  in  the  -Poet's  Corner  "of  the  Free  Press. 
This  paper  had  just  been  started  in  Newburyport 
by  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  who  was  only  three 
years  older  than  Whittier,  but  had  had  every 
advantage  of  education.  John  Whittier,  the 
father,  liked  the  solid  tone  of  it,  and  subscribed. 
Without  letting  her  brother  know,  Mary  got  one 
of  his  poems  and  sent  it  anonymously  to  the  editor 
of  the  paper.  When,  a  week  or  so  afterward,  the 
postman  came  along  by  the  field  where  the  Whit- 
tiers  were  at  work  and  flung  the  paper  over  the 
fence,  Greenleaf  looked  at  once  to  see  what  was  in 
the  < '  Poet's  Corner, "  and  was  immensely  surprised 
to  see  his  own  poem  there.  He  says  he  simply 
stood  and  stared  at  it,  without  reading  a  word. 
His  father  suggested  that  he  had  better  go  to 
work;  but  he  couldn't  help  opening  the  paper  again 
and  looking  at  his  own  poem. 

Another  poem  was  sent,  and  Garrison  wrote  a 
note  to  introduce  it,  in  which  he  said:  ''His  poetry 
bears  the  stamp  of  true  poetic  genius,  which,  if 


157 

carefully  cultivated,  will  rank  him  among  the  bards 
of  his  country."  How  strange  a  prophecy,  and 
how  strange  the  fortune  that  brought  together  the 
great  reformer,  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  and  the 
great  poet,  John  Greenleaf  Whittier,  when  both 
were  so  young  and  inexperienced! 


CHAPTER  VI 

HAVERHILL     ACADEMY 

It  was  a  happy  day  for  Whittier  when  his  sister 
sent  that  stolen  poem  to  the  paper  edited  by 
William  Lloyd  Garrison,  for  Garrison  immediately 
took  a  fancy  to  the  author.  After  printing  the 
second  poem  sent,  he  learned  from  what  part  of 
Haverhill  the  poems  came,  and  drove  out  fourteen 
miles  to  see  the  young  author. 

He  was  a  neatly  dressed,  handsome,  and  affable 
young  gentleman,  and  came  with  a  lady  friend. 
As  it  was  a  hot  summer  day,  Whittier  was  at  work 
in  the  fields,  wearing  doubtless  little  beside  an  old 
straw  hat,  a  shirt,  and  a  pair  of  overalls.  His  bash- 


'58 

fulness  made  him  wish  to  avoid  seeing  the  fine  city 
visitor;  but  his  sister  persuaded  him.  He  slipped 
in  at  the  back  door  and  changed  his  clothes,  and  a 
long  and  interesting  visit  with  Garrison  followed. 
They  became  fast  friends,  and  in  later  years  were 
workers  together  in  the  cause  of  the  slave. 

Friend  Whittier,  the  old  gentleman,  came  into 
the  room  while  the  two  were  having  their  first 
talk,  and  Garrison  told  him  he  ought  to  send  his 
son  away  to  school.  The  old  gentleman  was  not 
at  all  pleased  by  the  turn  affairs  were  taking,  and 
told  young  Garrison  that  he  ought  not  to  put  such 
notions  into  the  boy's  head.  As  we  have  already 
said,  Friend  Whittier,  being  a  matter-of-fact 
Quaker,  did  not  approve  of  poetry  anyway. 

So  this  time  passed  by,  and  Greenleaf  was  kept 
at  work  on  the  farm.  Garrison  gave  up  his  paper 
in  Newburyport  and  went  to  Boston,  and  the  young 
poet  sent  his  verses  to  the  Haver/till  Gazette.  A 
Mr.  Thayer  was  the  editor  of  this  paper,  and  he 
conceived  the  same  opinion  of  the  lad  that  Garrison 
had.  He  also  went  to  the  old  gentleman  and  urged 
him  to  give  his  son  a  classical  education.  An  acad- 


159 

emy  was  to  be  opened  in  Haverhill  that  fall,  and 
young  Whittier  could  attend  it  and  spend  part  of 
each  week  at  home.  Two  years  before,  Greenleaf 
had  seriously  injured  himself  by  undertaking  some 
very  hard  work  on  the  farm ;  indeed  from  this  strain 
he  suffered  all  his  life.  On  account  of  this,  his 
father  considered  the  matter  more  favorably. 

Mr.  Thayer,  the  editor,  promised  to  board  the 
young  man  in  his  family;  but  it  was  a  serious  ques 
tion  as  to  where  the  small  amount  of  money  needed 
was  to  come  from.  There  was  a  mortgage  of  $600 
on  the  farm,  and  nearly  all  the  ready  money  that 
could  be  obtained  went  to  pay  taxes  and  interest 
on  the  debt.  The  young  man  received  permission 
to  attend  the  academy;  but  he  must  pay  his  own 
way. 

It  was  not  an  easy  thing  to  pick  up  spare  change 
in  those  days,  as  the  elder  Whittier  well  knew;  but 
Greenleaf  looked  cheerfully  about.  An  opportunity 
soon  appeared.  A  hired  man  on  his  father's  farm 
occupied  his  winters  in  making  a  kind  of  cheap 
slippers,  which  he  sold  for  twenty-five  cents  a  pair. 
He  promised  to  teach  the  young  poet  the  art  of 


i6o 

making  them.  It  was  not  hard  to  learn.  During 
the  winter  of  1826-27  ne  made  enough  to  keep  him 
at  the  academy  six  months.  He  calculated  so 
closely  that  he  thought  he  would  have  twenty-five 
cents  more  than  enough  to  pay  his  expenses  of 
board,  books,  and  clothes.  At  the  end  of  the  term, 
sure  enough,  he  had  that  twenty-five  cents  left. 

James  F.  Otis,  a  noted  lawyer,  read  some  of 
Whittier's  poems,  and,  like  Garrison,  determined 
to  go  and  find  him.  He  was  told  that  he  was  a 
shoemaker  in  Haverhill.  He  says  that  he  found 
him  at  work  in  his  shoe  shop,  and  making  himself 
known  to  him,  they  spent  the  day  together  in  wan 
dering  over  the  hills,  and  on  the  shores  of  the  Mer- 
rimac  River,  talking  about  matters  literary.  Like 
Garrison,  Otis  later  became  an  intimate  friend  of 
Whittier. 

When  the  Haverhill  academy  was  opened,  Whit- 
tier  was  not  only  to  become  a  pupil;  but  he  con 
tributed  the  ode  that  was  sung.  This  gave  him  a 
sort  of  social  send-off  in  the  town,  and  henceforth 
he  was  something  of  a  personage  in  Haver 
hill.  In  the  year  1827  he  contributed  forty-seven 


poems  to  the  Haverhill  Gazette  alone,  and  forty- 
nine  in  1828. 

So  the  young  poet  that  William.  Lloyd  Garrison 
discovered  and  went  fourteen  miles  to  see  was 
beginning  to  become  famous. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE    FRIENDSHIP    OF    GOOD    WOMEN 

If  Whittier  ever  had  a  real  love  affair,  no  one 
seems  to  have  known  about  it.  The  fact  is,  he 
was  not  of  the  passionate  kind.  But  all  his  life 
his  best  friends  were  women,  and  many  a  good 
woman  he  knew  and  was  fond  of,  and  he  and  she 
became  real  friends.  And  of  that  friendship  with 
him,  all  those  women,  without  exception,  were 
proud  indeed.  In  a  letter  written  a  dozen  years 
after  his  school  life  began,  he  says: 

'  'For  myself,  I  owe  much  to  the  kind  encourage 
ment  of  female  friends.  A  bashful,  ignorant  boy, 
I  was  favored  by  the  kindness  of  a  lady  who  saw, 
or  thought  she  saw,  beneath  the  clownish  exterior 


162 

something  which  gave  promise  of  intellect  and 
worth.  [This  was  the  wife  of  Mr.  Thayer,  with 
whom  he  boarded.  ]  The  powers  of  my  own  mind, 
the  mysteries  of  my  own  spirit,  were  revealed  to 
myself,  only  as  they  were  called  out  by  one  of  those 
dangerous  relations  called  cousins,  who,  with  all 
her  boarding  school  glories  upon  her,  condescended 
to  smile  upon  my  rustic  simplicity.  She  was  so 
learned  in  the,  to  me,  more  than  occult  mysteries 
of  verbs  and  nouns,  and  philosophy,  and 
botany,  and  mineralogy,  and  French,  and  all  that, 
and  then  she  had  seen  something  of  society,  and 
could  talk  (an  accomplishment  at  that  time  to 
which  I  could  lay  no  claim),  that  on  the  whole  I 
looked  upon  her  as  a  being  to  obtain  whose  good 
opinion  no  effort  could  be  too  great." 

One  of  these  young  lady  friends,  perhaps  the 
very  cousin  of  whom  he  speaks,  wrote  of  him  years 
afterwards : 

"He  was  nearly  nineteen  when  I  first  saw  him. 
He  was  a  very  handsome,  distinguished-looking 
young  man.  His  eyes  were  remarkably  beautiful. 
He  was  tall,  slight,  and  very  erect;  a  bashful 


i63 

youth,  but  never  awkward,  my  mother  said,  who 
was  a  better  judge  of  such  matters  than  I.  ... 

"With  intimate  friends  he  talked  a  great  deal, 
and  in  a  wonderfully  interesting  manner;  usually 
earnest,  and  frequently  playful.  He  had  a  great 
deal  of  wit.  It  was  a  family  characteristic.  .  .  . 
The  influence  of  his  Quaker  bringing-up  was  mani 
fest.  I  think  it  was  always  his  endeavor 

to  render  less 
The  sum  of  human  wretchedness. 

This,  I  say,  was  his  steadfast  endeavor,  in  spite  of 
his  inborn  love  of  teasing.  He  was  very  modest, 
never  conceited,  never  egotistic.  One  could  never 
flatter  him.  I  never  tried,  but  I  have  seen  people 
attempt  it,  and  it  was  a  signal  failure.  He  did 
not  flatter,  but  told  some  very  wholesome  and 
unpalatable  truths." 

An  amusing  story  is  told  of  Whittier's  love  of 
teasing.  At  the  time  it  happened  he  must  have 
been  between  thirty  and  forty.  A  Quaker  sister 
named  Sophronia  Page,  who  went  about  preach 
ing  to  little  gatherings  of  the  Friends,  stopped 
one  night  at  his  mother's  house.  As  most  Quaker 


164 

bonnets  are  precisely  alike,  there  is  no  way  of  tell 
ing  them  apart  except  by  the  name  inside.  When 
Sophronia  Page  went  away  she  put  on  Mrs.  Whit- 
tier's  bonnet  by  mistake.  When  she  got  to  the 
next  stopping  place  and  saw  the  name  inside,  she 
sent  the  bonnet  back.  Whittier  noticed  it  in  a 
box  in  the  hall,  and  thought  he  would  have  some 
fun  with  his  mother. 

"What  does  thee  think  Sophronia  Page  has 
done?"  he  asked  her,  sitting  down. 

"I  don't  know,  Greenleaf, "  she  said  quietly. 
"What  is  it?" 

"Something  I'm  much  afraid  she  will  be  called 
up  in  Yearly  Meeting  for." 

"I  hope  she  hasn't  been  meddling  with  the 
troubles  of  the  Friends,"  said  Mrs.  Whittier, 
anxiously,  referring  to  some  church  quarrels. 

"Worse  than  that!"  said  the  young  man,  while 
his  mother  got  more  and  more  excited.  "She  has 
been  taking  other  people's  things,  and  has  just 
begun  to  send  some  of  them  back." 

With  that  he  went  into  the  hall  and  brought 
back  the  bonnet. 


165 

( 'If  thee  were  twenty  years  younger  I  would  take 
thee  over  my  knee!"  said  his  mother  when  she  saw 
what  it  was  all  about. 

Among  his  other  famous  women  friends  was  Mrs. 
Sigourney,  the  poetess,  with  whom  he  became  ac 
quainted  in  Hartford  while  he  was  editing  a  paper 
there.  He  also  knew  Lucy  Larcom;  and  it  was 
said  at  one  time  that  he  was  engaged  to  marry 
Lucy  Hooper,  but  there  was  no  truth  in  this.  Her 
death,  shortly  afterwards,  made  him  feel  very  sad. 
In  his  poetic  works  you  may  find  poems  addressed 
to  both  these  women. 

While  speaking  of  women  we  must  not  omit  a 
description  of  that  woman  who  was  to  him  dearest 
of  all  women  in  the  world,  his  sister  Lizzie.  This 
gifted  sister  Lizzie  was  '  'the  pet  and  pride  of  the 
household,  one  of  the  rarest  women,  her  brother's 
complement,  possessing  all  the  readiness  of  speech 
and  facility  of  intercourse  which  he  wanted;  taking 
easily  in  his  presence  the  lead  in  conversation, 
which  the  poet  so  gladly  abandoned  to  her,  while 
he  sat  rubbing  his  hands  and  laughing  at  her 
daring  sallies.  She  was  as  unlike  him  in  person  as 


i66 

in  mind;  for  his  dignified  erectness,  she  had  end 
less  motion  and  vivacity;  for  his  regular  and  hand 
some  features,  she  had  a  long  Jewish  nose,  so  full 
of  expression  that  it  seemed  to  enhance,  instead  of 
injuring,  the  effect  of  the  large  and  liquid  eyes  that 
glowed  with  merriment  and  sympathy  behind  it. 
.  .  .  Her  quick  thoughts  came  like  javelins ;  a  saucy 
triumph  gleamed  in  her  great  eyes;  the  head  moved 
a  little  from  side  to  side  with  the  quiver  of  a  weapon, 
and  lo!  you  were  transfixed." 

During  his  long  life  this  sister  was  to  Whittier 
more  than  sweetheart  or  wife,  for  she  had  the  wit 
and  the  sympathy  of  all  womankind  in  her  one 
frail  form;  and  Whittier  knew  it  and  depended  on 
it  for  his  happiness. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

POLITICAL    AMBITION 

Young  Whittier  remained  at  Haverhill  academy 
only  two  terms.  We  have  seen  that  he  paid  for 
the  first  one  by  making  shoes.  The  second  he  paid 
for  by  teaching  school.  When  he  went  to  the 


i67 

committee  to  be  examined  for  this  school  he  felt 
rather  nervous;  but  the  committee  asked  him  only 
for  a  specimen  of  his  handwriting,  which  was  very 
neat  and  clear. 

He  decided  not  to  go  to  college,  because  he  said 
he  wouldn't  live  on  the  charities  of  others,  and  it 
would  have  been  impossible  to  get  through  college 
without  borrowing  money  of  friends.  Poor  as  he 
was,  Whittier  never  borrowed  money. 

While  in  Haverhill  he  wrote  a  great  many  poems 
and  articles  for  the  local  newspaper.  Garrison  was 
then  in  Boston  editing  a  temperance  paper.  But 
soon  he  thought  he  had  something  better  in  view, 
and  concluded  to  turn  the  editorship  over  to  Whit- 
tier.  Whittier  accepted  the  position  and  went  to 
Boston;  but  he  was  to  edit  the  Manufacturer,  not 
the  Philanthropist.  Both  were  published  by  the 
same  people.  This  is  the  way  he  writes  about  his 
work : 

"The  Manufacturer  goes  down  well,  thanks  to 
the  gullibility  of  the  public,  and  we  are  doing  well, 
very  well.  Have  had  one  or  two  rubs  from  other 
papers,  but  I  have  had  some  compliments  which 


168 

were  quite  as  much  as  my  vanity  could  swallow. 
Have  tolerable  good  society,  Mrs.  Hale  and  her 
literary  club,  etc.  I  am  coming  out  for  the  tariff 

by  and  by — have  done  something  at  it  already 

but  the  astonisher  is  yet  to  come!  Shall  blow 
Cambreling  and  McDuffie  sky-high." 

Cambreling  and  McDuffie  were  politicians  whom 
he  was  going  to  oppose. 

We  should  hardly  think  that  the  gentle  poet 
Whittier,  Quaker  as  he  was,  would  conceive  the 
ambition  to  become  a  politician;  but  he  was  editing 
a  political  newspaper,  and  soon  got  deep  into  poli 
tics  and  liked  it. 

He  had  not  been  in  Boston  long  when,  his  father 
becoming  ill,  he  went  back  to  the  farm  and 
remained  there  until  the  old  gentleman  died,  in 
June,  1830.  He  spent  all  his  time  in  study  and 
writing,  however,  and  after  his  father's  death  he 
was  asked  to  edit  a  political  paper  in  Hartford, 
Connecticut.  He  didn't  know  anything  about 
Connecticut  politics;  but  he  took  hold  and  soon 
learned  how  matters  stood.  Everybody  liked  him 
and  he  made  some  excellent  friends  there. 


169 

Of  course  rival  political  newspapers  are  always 
saying  sharp  things  about  one  another.  After  he 
had  been  in  Hartford  a  few  weeks  he  opened  a  copy 
of  the  Catskill  Recorder  and  saw  a  long  article 
headed  "John  G.  Whittier,"  in  which  he  was 
abused  and  ridiculed  unmercifully.  He  hid  the 
paper  so  that  no  one  should  see  it,  and  went  around 
in  fear  and  trembling,  thinking  every  one  would 
know  about  it.  Finally  he  wrote  to  the  editor  of 
the  paper,  protesting;  but  the  editor  had  another 
paragraph,  saying  that,  if  he  was  as  "thin-skinned" 
as  that,  he  had  better  keep  out  of  politics.  Soon 
after  this  the  New  York  papers,  among  them 
Bryant's  Evening  Post,  spoke  of  him  and  his  editor 
ship  in  a  very  complimentary  manner,  and  he  felt 
better. 

The  fact  is,  Whittier  was  a  good  politician.  He 
managed  affairs  in  Haverhill  for  years,  and  had  a 
sort  of  party  of  his  own  which  controlled  things. 
Once  on  election  day  a  tipsy  man  asked  for  a  ride 
with  him  into  town,  and  said  that  if  Whittier  would 
give  him  the  ride  he  would  vote  for  his  candidate. 
Usually  the  man  had  voted  on  the  other  side. 


i  ;o 

Whittier  said,  "All  right, "and  took  him  along.  He 
supported  the  man  to  the  polls,  put  the  right  ballot 
in  his  hand,  and  told  him  to  vote.  But  the  fellow 
was  so  intoxicated  he  was  obstinate,  and  deter 
mined  to  vote  the  other  way.  At  the  last  moment 
somebody  handed  him  the  wrong  ballot,  and  he 
put  it  in  the  box. 

There  was  in  Haverhill  district  a  politician  who 
did  not  really  belong  to  Whittier's  party,  but  who 
had  always  been  elected  after  giving  written 
pledges.  After  he  had  been  elected  in  this  way  for 
several  terms,  and  had  been  forced  by  Whittier  to 
live  up  to  his  promises,  he  determined  to  go  in 
without  pledges.  Whittier  was  away,  and  so  he 
wrote  a  noncommittal  letter,  referring  to  his  past 
record,  and  saying  he  didn't  intend  to  pledge  him 
self  any  further.  But  Whittier  came  back  in  the 
nick  of  time,  saw  the  danger,  and  went  over  to  see 
the  man,  whose  name  was  Caleb  Gushing.  Whit 
tier  told  him  he  would  not  be  elected  unless  he 
signed  the  desired  pledges.  After  a  while  he  said 
he  would  sign  anything  Whittier  wrote.  So  the 
young  politician  sat  down  and  wrote  a  letter,  which 


171 

Mr.  Gushing  copied  and  signed.  It  was  printed  as 
a  circular  and  sent  all  around  town,  and  Gushing 
was  elected.  Then  after  he  was  elected  Whittier 
watched  him  closely,  and  saw  that  he  made  good 
the  promises  in  that  letter.  Some  time  after,  he 
was  on  the  point  of  being  made  a  cabinet  officer  by 
the  party  to  which  Whittier  was  opposed;  but 
by  the  use  of  this  letter  Whittier  prevented  it. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE    GREAT    QUESTION    OF    SLAVERY 

It  is  altogether  probable  that  Whittier  would 
have  been  elected  to  Congress,  and  have  had  per 
haps  a  great  political  career,  had  it  not  been  for 
an  act  of  genuine  sacrifice  on  his  part,  made  for 
the  sake  of  right  and  conscience. 

In  1833  Garrison  pointed  out  to  him  that  the 
country  must  be  roused  on  the  question  of  slavery. 
As  a  good  Quaker,  Whittier  was  already  an  aboli 
tionist.  He  felt  deeply  the  insufferable  wrong 


172 

that  American  citizens,  even  though  black,  should 
be  slaves  under  the  whip  of  a  master.  In  an  early 
poem  he  cries  passionately: 

What,  ho! — our  countryman  in  chains! 

The  whip  on  woman's  shrinking  flesh! 
Our  soil  yet  reddening  with  the  stains 

Caught  from  her  scourging  warm  and  fresh ! 
What!  mothers  from  their  children  riven! 

What!  God's  own  image  bought  and  sold! 
Americans  to  market  driven, 

And  bartered  as  the  brute  for  gold ! 

When  Garrison's  appeal  came,  Whittier  was  at 
home  on  the  farm,  having  given  up  the  editorship 
of  the  Hartford  paper  on  account  of  illness.  Caleb 
Gushing,  seven  years  younger  than  he,  had  come 
home  from  Europe  and  through  Whittier's  influ 
ence  had  been  elected  to  Congress.  Whittier's 
own  name  was  being  mentioned.  A  life  of  political 
ambition  seemed  to  lie  open  before  him.  But  with 
Garrison's  appeal,  he  began  a  thorough  and  careful 
investigation  of  the  question  of  slavery  and  its 
abolition  in  the  United  States.  At  last  he  wrote 


173 

a  pamphlet  entitled  -Justice  and  Expediency." 
It  was  a  brilliant  defense  of  the  antislavery  posi 
tion.  This  he  had  published  at  his  own  expense, 
poor  as  he  was.  When  it  was  about  ready  to 
appear  he  hesitated,  and  considered  the  situation 
carefully.  The  abolitionists  were  a  poor,  despised 
party.  If  he  cast  in  his  lot  with  them,  none  of  the 
great  political  parties  would  have  anything  to  do 
with  him :  he  must  give  up  his  political  ambition, 
and  devote  himself  to  a  cause  that  would  require 
years  for  its  success,  even  if  it  should  ever 
succeed. 

In  after  times  a  boy  of  fifteen,  who  was  am 
bitious  in  a  political  way,  came  to  him  for  advice. 
Whittier  said  that  as  a  young  man  his  ideal  had 
been  the  life  of  a  prominent  politician.  From 
this  he  had  been  persuaded  only  by  the  appeals 
of  his  friends— chiefly  Garrison.  Taking  their 
advice,  he  had  united  with  the  persecuted  and 
obscure  band  of  abolitionists,  and  to  this  course  he 
attributed  all  his  after  success  in  life.  Then,  turn 
ing  to  the  boy,  he  placed  his  hand  on  his  head, 
and  said  in  his  gentle  voice:  -My  lad,  if  thou 


174 

wouldst  win  success,  join  thyself  to  some  unpopular 
but  noble  cause. " 

From  this  time  on,  for  thirty  years,  Whittier 
continued  to  be  a  very  poor  man.  He  made  anti- 
slavery  speeches  sometimes,  edited  antislavery 
papers,  wrote  antislavery  poems,  was  secretary  of 
antislavery  societies.  For  all  this  he  was  paid 
very  little,  and  at  the  same  time  his  health  was 
poor.  He  sold  the  farm  which  had  been  his 
father's,  and  moved  to  Amesbury,  where  he  lived 
for  the  remainder  of  his  life. 

His  mother  and  his  sister  approved  of  his  course, 
and  supported  him  in  every  way.  Their  enthusi 
astic  help  made  his  life  even  pleasant.  He  thought 
nothing  of  poverty  or  hardship,  but  only  of  the 
great  work  into  which  he  had  thrown  himself.  At 
one  time  he  thought  he  must  mortgage  his  home; 
but  a  friend  came  to  his  assistance,  and  at  last  in 
his  old  age  he  had  money  and  comfort  and  all 
that  success  brings  with  it. 

From  this  time  on,  Whittier  went  through  times  of 
terrible  struggle  and  conflict.  Garrison  had  started 
his  well-known  paper,  the  Liberator,w  Boston.  To 


175 

it  Whittier  contributed  the  poem  from  which  we 
have  quoted  the  verse  on  page  44.  In  1835  he  was 
elected  to  the  legislature  by  his  fellow  townsmen  of 
Haverhill. 

While  attending  a  special  session  of  the  legisla 
ture  that  year,  he  saw  the  mob  which  came  near 
hanging  Garrison,  and  saw  the  rope  about  his 
friend's  neck  as  the  crowd  hurried  him  around  the 
corner  of  a  street.  The  riot  started  in  an  attempt 
to  break  up  a  meeting  of  the  Female  Antislavery 
Society,  which  Whittier's  sister  was  attending. 
When  he  heard  of  the  outbreak  he  hurried  off  to 
the  rescue  of  his  sister;  but  she  and  the  other 
women  had  escaped;  and  the  police  finally  saved 
Garrison  and  took  him  to  the  jail  for  protection. 


CHAPTER   X 

HOW   WHITTIER  WAS    MOBBED 

We  must  now  mention  a  few  exciting  events  in 
which  Whittier  himself  took  part.  At  the  time 
of  the  occurrences  referred  to  in  the  last  chapter, 
George  Thompson,  an  eloquent  English  reformer 


1 76 

who  had  helped  to  secure  the  abolition  of  slavery 
in  the  British  colonies,  came  to  Boston  to  speak 
against  slavery  in  the  United  States.  It  hap 
pened  that  the  good  people  of  the  churches 
thought  that  the  easy  way  to  remove  slavery  was 
to  send  the  slaves  back  to  Africa,  and  for  this  they 
took  up  collections.  Garrison  and  Whittier  came 
out  strongly  against  this  weak-kneed  plan,  and 
George  Thompson  helped  them.  Of  course,  the 
church  folk  were  angry;  and  all  the  business  men 
were  angry,  because  they  said  it  spoiled  business 
to  stir  up  this  agitation.  As  a  result,  the  rough 
characters  in  every  town  saw  a  chance  to  have 
sport,  and  did  all  they  could  to  break  up  the 
meetings  of  abolitionists.  The  good  church  peo 
ple  and  all  the  well-to-do  and  solid  members  of 
the  community  were  so  angry  that  they  wouldn't 
do  anything  to  stop  the  mobs;  and  the  result  was 
that,  wherever  the  speakers  went,  stones  and  rotten 
eggs  were  thrown  at  them,  and  abuse  of  all  sorts 
was  heaped  upon  them. 

They  got  up  a  cry  against  George  Thompson 
especially,   that  he  was  an  Englishman  who  had 


177 

come  over  to  try  to  steal  American  business;  for 
in  those  days  Americans  were  very  jealous  of 
England.  They  said  Thompson's  antislavery 
speeches  were  intended  simply  to  stir  up  a  quar 
rel  between  the  Northern  people  and  the  South 
ern,  so  that  England  could  step  in  and  get  their 
business.  Handbills  were  thrown  broadcast  in 
Boston  offering  one  hundred  dollars  to  the  first 
person  that  would  lay  violent  hands  on  him. 

The  first  mob  was  the  one  Whittier  saw  in 
Boston,  from  which  his  sister  narrowly  escaped. 
The  rioters  were  after  Thompson;  but  not  find 
ing  him,  they  took  Garrison  instead. 

A  little  later  Thompson  came  to  Haverhill  and 
stopped  with  the  Whittiers.  He  and  the  poet 
immediately  set  out  on  a  tour  into  New  Hamp 
shire.  With  Thompson  had  come  a  clergyman 
named  Samuel  J.  May.  He  was  to  have  held 
a  meeting  one  Sunday  in  the  First  Parish 
meeting-house  in  Concord,  but  the  committee 
refused  to  allow  him  to  speak  on  slavery,  and 
another  church  was  obtained. 

At  half-past  seven  he  began  to  speak.     Every 


1 78 

one  was  listening  with  breathless  attention,  when 
a  stone  came  through  a  window.  He  paid  no 
attention,  but  kept  steadily  on.  In  a  moment 
another  stone  came  through  the  pulpit  window, 
and  another  big  one  fell  among  the  audience  and 
frightened  them  so  they  all  started  for  the  door. 
Rev.  Mr.  May  then  decided  to  close  the  meet 
ing,  and  called  to  the  people  to  receive  the  bene 
diction. 

It  was  a  good  thing  he  did  so,  for  the  steps 
of  the  church  had  been  taken  away,  and  if  the 
crowd  had  poured  out  they  would  have  fallen 
headlong.  A  heavily  loaded  cannon  had  also 
been  brought  up,  and  would  have  been  used  with 
terrible  effect  had  the  meeting  lasted  much  longer. 
Whittier's  sister  took  one  arm  of  the  clergyman, 
and  another  young  lady  the  other,  and  they  got 
him  through  the  crowd  without  injury. 

Whittier  and  Thompson  had  in  the  meantime 
gone  to  meet  a  still  more  violent  mob.  A  man 
named  George  Kent  arranged  a  meeting  for  them 
in  Concord,  Massachusetts,  since  famous  as  the 
home  of  Hawthorne  and  Emerson.  Handbills 


179 

were  circulated  announcing  that  George  Thomp 
son  and  John  G.  Whittier  would  hold  a  meeting 
' '  at  which  the  principles,  views,  and  operations 
of  the  abolitionists  would  be  explained."  The 
selectmen  warned  the  people  who  were  promoting 
it  that  there  would  be  trouble  if  they  held  it;  but 
they  persisted. 

As  the  hour  for  the  meeting  approached,  a 
great  crowd  gathered.  The  selectmen  ordered 
that  the  doors  should  not  be  opened.  Thereupon 
the  crowd  determined  that  they  would  find  ''the 
incendiary  George  Thompson,"  and  punish  him 
as  he  deserved;  and,  with  loud  threats,  they  ac 
cordingly  set  off  for  the  house  of  George  Kent  and 
his  ' '  wine  cellar. " 

On  the  way  they  met  Whittier.  They  thought 
he  was  Thompson,  in  spite  of  his  Quaker  coat 
and  the  assurances  of  a  gentleman  who  was  with 
him  that  he  was  not  the  man,  and  began  to 
pelt  him  with  rotten  eggs,  mud,  and  stones. 
Whittier  was  only  lamed  a  little;  but  his  coat  was 
spoiled  by  the  decayed  eggs  so  that  he  could  not 
wear  it  any  more.  Years  afterward,  when  clothes 


i8o 

were  being  sent  to  the  negroes  in  the  South,  he 
donated  this  coat. 

At  last  Whittier  and  his  companion  escaped 
into  the  house  of  Colonel  Kent,  a  brother  of 
George  Kent,  and  the  colonel  convinced  the  crowd 
that  Thompson  was  not  there.  They  therefore 
pushed  on  to  the  house  of  George  Kent,  where 
he  really  was.  Quite  a  little  company  of  anti- 
slavery  people  had  assembled  there  to  see 
Thompson,  among  them  two  nieces  of  Daniel 
Webster.  But  when  the  crowd  arrived,  he  had 
left  the  house  by  a  back  street. 

When  the  mob  found  that  he  was  gone,  they 
went  away  to  celebrate  with  fireworks  and  bon 
fires.  In  the  meantime  Whittier,  anxious  for  his 
friend,  changed  his  hat,  and  escaping  through 
the  crowd  went  to  the  house  of  George  Kent. 
After  a  time  Thompson  came  back.  So  did  the 
crowd,  all  the  time  firing  guns,  throwing  stones, 
and  making  a  great  noise. 

At  last,  early  in  the  morning,  a  horse  and 
buggy  were  brought  around  to  the  back  door, 
and  Thompson  and  Whittier  got  into  the  vehicle. 


Then  the  gates  were  thrown  open,  and,  before 
the  crowd  knew  what  was  being  done,  they  drove 
away  at  a  furious  rate  and  escaped. 

They  drove  fast;  but  the  news  had  spread  be 
fore  them.  They  came  to  an  inn  at  some  dis 
tance  from  Concord.  A  number  of  men  were 
telling  about  the  riot,  and  exhibiting  a  handbill 
calling  upon  all  good  citizens  to  assist  in  captur 
ing  George  Thompson  and  giving  him  his  deserts. 

"How  will  you  recognize  the  rascal? "  asked 
Whittier. 

"Easily  enough;  he  is  a  tonguey  fellow,"  said 
the  landlord. 

When  they  were  in  their  carriage  ready  to 
drive  away,  Whittier  said,  "I  am  John  G.  Whittier, 
and  this  is  George  Thompson. " 

The  men  stared  at  them  until  they  were  out 
of  sight,  but  did  not  offer  to  lay  hands  on  them. 

A  year  or  two  later  Whittier  went  to  Philadel 
phia  to  edit  an  antislavery  paper.  The  aboli 
tionists  had  put  up  a  large,  fine  building,  called  Penn 
sylvania  Hall.  Whittier  moved  his  editorial  office 
into  it  as  Soon  as  it  was  finished.  A  series  of 


182 

meetings  were  at  once  held  in  it;  but  they  did  not 
last  long,  for  one  night  a  mob  burned  the  build 
ing,  and  of  course  Whittier's  office,  with  all  his 
papers,  was  destroyed. 


CHAPTER  XI 

SOME  OF  WHITTIER'S  FAMOUS  POEMS 
It  is  not  necessary  to  tell  all  the  events  of  those 
years  of  struggle  and  hardship  and  poverty. 
Whittier  wrote  a  great  many  poems  on  slavery.  A 
volume  containing  one  hundred  of  them  was  pub 
lished  without  his  knowledge  in  1837  by  Isaac 
Knapp,  publisher  of  the  Liberator  in  Boston.  It 
was  entitled  ' '  Poems  Written  during  the  Progress 
of  the  Abolition  Question  in  the  United  States, 
between  the  years  1830  and  1838.  By  John  G. 
Whittier."  He  was  in  New  York  when  it 
came  out.  It  was  the  first  edition  of  his  poems 
ever  published.  The  next  year  he  edited  a  volume 
of  antislavery  poems  entitled  ' '  The  North  Star, " 
only  a  few  of  which  he  contributed.  In  1839  the 


financial  agent  of  the  antislavery  society,  Joseph 
Healy,  published  a  volume  of  poems  by  Whittier. 
There  were  180  pages  in  the  book,  half  of  which 
was  devoted  to  poems  on  slavery,  the  remainder  to 
miscellaneous  poems. 

So  the  years  passed  by,  and  Whittier  and  his 
friends  kept  up  the  great  fight  against  slavery. 
The  poet  wrote  hundreds  of  pieces,  poetry  and 
prose,  which  were  published  in  all  sorts  of  papers 
all  over  the  country.  Now  he  was  at  Haverhill 
in  politics,  always  working  for  the  cause  of  the 
slave,  now  in  Philadelphia  or  somewhere  else 
editing  a  paper;  and  again  at  his  home  in  Ames- 
bury  recovering  his  health. 

In  the  meantime  the  great  cause  to  which  he 
devoted  himself  moved  steadily  on  until  the  Civil 
War  came  and  all  the  negroes  were  set  free. 
Whittier  did  not  believe  in  war;  but  when  it 
came  he  urged  the  Quakers,  who  were  opposed 
to  fighting,  to  become  nurses,  like  the  nuns  and 
sisters  of  the  Catholic  church,  and  minister  to 
the  sick  and  wounded. 

In    1857  the  Atlantic  Monthly  was   started    in 


1 84 

Boston.  All  the  great  writers  of  the  day  were  to 
have  a  hand  in  it  —  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Emer 
son,  Holmes,  and  others.  Whittier  was  also 
invited  to  take  part,  and  an  edition  of  his  col 
lected  poems  was  published.  The  Atlantic 
Monthly  paid  more  for  contributions  than  most 
other  periodicals  in  those  days.  Whittier  got  fifty 
dollars  for  each  poem,  and  had  a  poem  published 
nearly  every  month.  He  was  in  very  delicate  health 
at  this  time,  and  was  so  poor  that  this  small 
amount  was  a  godsend  to  him.  He  did  not 
attend  the  monthly  dinners  in  Boston,  to  which 
all  the  other  literary  men  went,  for  he  was  a 
Quaker  and  did  not  approve  of  wine  and  luxuries; 
and  besides  he  was  not  well  enough  to  go.  He 
sent  his  poems,  however,  with  modest  little  notes, 
asking  Lowell  if  he  thought  they  would  do,  and 
telling  him  not  to  hesitate  in  rejecting  them  if  he 
thought  them  silly.  He  seemed  always  to  be 
afraid  lest  his  beautiful  simple  poems  would  be 
so  simple  that  some  people  would  consider  them 
foolish. 

In   1858    his  mother  died,    and    now    he    lived 


1 85 

alone  with  his  sister.  She,  too,  died  in  1864,  the 
last  year  of  the  war,  and  the  next  year  he  wrote 
1  'Snow-Bound"  as  a  sort  of  tribute  to  her  memory. 
It  was  published  in  Boston  in  1866  and  at  once 
proved  very  popular.  Whittier  made  $10,000  out 
of  the  royalties  on  it.  His  great  regret  was  that 
his  mother  and  sister  had  not  lived  to  enjoy  the 
benefit  of  his  good  fortune. 

Two  famous  poems  deserve  mention.  One  is 
' '  Barbara  Frietchie. "  A  lady  friend  of  Whittier 
heard  the  story  in  Washington,  and  at  once  said, 
"That  is  a  beautiful  subject  for  a  ballad  by 
Whittier.  It  is  almost  like  a  scrap  of  paper  lying 
around  with  his  signature  on  it."  So  she  wrote  it 
out  and  sent  it  to  him.  Not  long  after  that  he 
wrote  the  poem,  following  the  original  story  almost 
exactly.  Some  people  afterward  declared  that  it 
was  not  true ;  but  there  was  certainly  an  old  Ger 
man  woman  who  kept  the  Union  flag  waving  over 
the  rebel  troops. 

The  other  poem  is  "The  Barefoot  Boy."  Whit 
tier  wrote  it  in  memory  of  his  own  boyhood.  '  'For, " 
says  he,  ' 'I  was  once  a  barefoot  boy."  It  pleased 


1 86 

him  very  much,  and  he  sent  it  up  to  Mr.  Fields, 
who  was  then  editing  the  Atlantic,  and  asked  ' '  if 
he  thought  it  would  do."  Mr.  Fields  thought  it 
very  fine,  and  said  it  must  go  into  the  edition  of 
Whittier's  works  which  he  was  then  publishing. 

Whittier  was  now  sixty  years  old.  The  struggles 
of  war  and  politics  were  over.  The  dear  ones  he 
loved  were  dead.  To  amuse  and  relieve  himself 
he  wrotetho.se  simple,  beautiful  ballads,  which  every 
person  has  read  and  admired.  They  were  among 
the  finest  things  he  ever  did.  Among  them  were 
"Maud  Muller,"  "Skipper  Ireson's  Ride,"  and 
others  equally  familiar.  They  were  cheerful  and 
happy,  and  some  were  about  the  days  of  his  child 
hood.  There  was  occasionally  a  tinge  of  sadness 
in  them,  but  sadness  mingled  with  hope. 

Of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen, 

The  saddest  are  these:  "It  might  have  been!" 

Ah,  well !  for  us  all  some  sweet  hope  lies 
Deeply  buried  from  human  eyes ; 

And,  in  the  hereafter,  angels  may 
Roll  the  stone  from  its  grave  away ! 


i87 

Whittier's  life  might  have  been  much  easier  and 
much  happier.  But  he  had  helped  much  in  the 
accomplishment  of  a  great  work,  and  he  was  not 
one  to  regret  all  his  hardships  and  sufferings. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE    END    OF   A    SUCCESSFUL   LIFE 

Before  closing  this  short  biography  we  must 
refer  briefly  to  one  or  two  interesting  anecdotes 
and  circumstances.  Whittier  was  color-blind,  at 
least  as  to  red  and  green.  He  could  see  no  differ 
ence  between  the  color  of  ripe  strawberries  and  the 
leaves  of  the  vine.  Yellow  he  thought  the  finest 
color  in  the  world,  and  perhaps  for  this  reason  he 
preferred  the  golden-rod. 

When  the  Peace  Jubilee  was  to  be  celebrated 
after  the  Civil  War,  Patrick  S.  Gilmore,  the 
famous  bandmaster,  asked  Whittier  to  write  an 
ode  for  the  occasion.  He  declined,  and  then  Gil- 
more  offered  a  prize  to  the  poet  who  would  con- 


1 88 

tribute  the  best  one.  Whittier  thought  he  would 
write  one  and  send  it  anonymously.  No  notice 
was  taken  of  it.  Some  people  will  point  a  moral 
to  this  tale  by  saying,  "See  what  a  reputation 
is!" 

Whittier  was  very  fond  of  pets.  Once  he  had  a 
gray  parrot.  It  was  trained  on  shipboard  and 
would  swear  occasionally;  but  it  soon  fell  into  the 
quiet  ways  of  its  home.  One  Sunday  morning, 
however,  it  got  on  top  of  the  chimney  while  the 
church  bells  were  ringing,  and  began  to  dance  and 
scream  and  swear,  while  the  poor  Quakers  inside  the 
house  came  out  and  looked  helplessly  up  at  him, 
wondering  how  they  would  get  him  down.  After 
that  he  fell  down  the  chimney  and  remained  in 
the  soot  two  days.  When  he  was  discovered  and 
taken  out  he  was  nearly  starved,  and  died  not  long 
after. 

Whittier  also  had  a  little  bantam  rooster  which 
he  trained  to  crow  when  he  placed  it  at  the  door  of 
his  niece's  room  in  the  morning.  Every  morning 
Whittier  would  push  open  her  door  and  put  the 
rooster  on  top  of  it;  and  the  little  fowl  would 


1 89 

crow   lustily   until    his   young    mistress    was  quite 
awake. 

One  day  not  long  after  the  war  the  Whittiers 
received  a  small  box,  and  on  opening  it  they  were 
astonished  to  see  little  spikes  sticking  out  all  over. 
Whittier's  niece  at  once  guessed  it  must  be  an 
infernal  machine,  and  took  it  out  and  buried 
it  in  the  garden.  A  few  days  after  there  came  a 
letter  saying  a  paperweight,  made  out  of  the  bullets 
from  a  famous  battlefield,  had  been  sent.  Then 
they  knew  it  must  be  the  thing  they  thought  an 
infernal  machine,  and  went  and  dug  it  up;  and 
after  that  it  always  stood  on  the  poet's  desk. 

During  the  time  of  the  war,  Gail  Hamilton,  a 
friend  of  Whittier's,  embroidered  a  pair  of  slippers 
for  him.  They  were  in  Quaker  gray,  but  on  them 
was  pictured  a  fierce  eagle,  with  a  bunch  of  thun 
derbolts  in  one  claw.  He  was  looking  knowingly 
around,  as  much  as  to  say  that  if  he  got  a  good 
chance  when  nobody  was  looking,  he  would  hurl 
those  thunderbolts.  This  was  intended  as  a  joke 
on  Whittier,  who  was  a  Quaker  and  opposed  to 
war,  but  still  had  a  good  deal  of  the  warlike  spirit 


190 

in  him  ready  to  break  out  at  any  moment.  Whit- 
tier  used  to  say,  referring  to  the  slippers,  that  Gail 
Hamilton  was  as  sharp  with  her  needle  as  with  her 
tongue. 

On  the  occasion  of  his  seventieth  birthday, 
Whittier  was  given  a  great  dinner  at  the  Hotel 
Brunswick  in  Boston.  Nearly  all  the  famous 
writers  of  the  day  were  present.  When  it  came 
the  poet's  turn  to  respond  to  the  address  of  con 
gratulation,  he  said  Longfellow  would  read  a  short 
poem  he  had  written.  He  handed  a  paper  to  that 
poet,  who  read  the  response. 

After  that,  his  birthdays  were  celebrated  more  or 
less  regularly,  and  often  Whittier  had  to  make 
great  efforts  to  escape  the  '  'pilgrims"  who  came  to 
Amesbury  to  see  him.  Once  a  party  of  boys  from 
Exeter  Academy  started  over  to  visit  him  and  get 
his  autograph.  By  accident  they  were  delayed, 
and  when  they  reached  his  house  it  was  the  dead 
of  night  and  the  poet  was  in  bed.  He  got  up,  how 
ever,  and  gave  them  hospitality,  writing  in  all  their 
books.  Before  he  had  finished,  one  of  the  boys 
said,  *  'You  have  written  only  John  in  my  book. " 


1  'I  am  afraid  some  of  you  haven't  even  got  as 
much  as  that,"  said  he  drily,  and  took  up  the 
candle  and  went  off  to  bed. 

He  died  on  the  ;th  of  September,  1892,  at  the 
house  of  some  friends  in  New  Hampshire,  with 
whom  he  was  staying. 

We  cannot  close  this  account  of  the  life  of  the 
dearest  and  sweetest  of  poets  better  than  by  quot 
ing  his  own  words  about  himself: 

And  while  my  words  are  read, 
Let  this  at  least  be  said  : 
"Whate'er  his  life's  defeatures, 
He  loved  his  fellow-creatures. 


"To  all  who  humbly  suffered, 
His  tongue  and  end  he  offered ; 
His  life  was  not  his  own, 
Nor  lived  for  self  alone. 

"  Hater  of  din  and  riot, 
He  lived  in  days  unquiet; 
And,  lover  of  all  beauty, 
Trod  the  hard  ways  of  duty. 


192 

4 'He  meant  no  wrong  to  any, 
He  sought  the  good  of  many, 
Yet  knew  both  sin  and  folly, — 
May  God  forgive  him  wholly!" 

Also  these  lines  from  "My  Soul  and  I": 

I  have  wrestled  stoutly  with  the  wrong, 

And  borne  the  right 
From  beneath  the  footfall  of  the  throng 

To  life  and  light. 

Wherever  Freedom  shivered  a  chain, 

God  speed,  quoth  I ; 
To  Error  amidst  her  shouting  train 

I  gave  the  lie. 


NOTE.— The  thanks  of  the  publishers  are  due  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 
for  their  kind  permission  to  use  selections  from  the  copyrighted  works  of  Whittier. 


THE  STORY  OF 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 


OLIVER    WEN  DEI 


HOLMES 


CHAPTER  I 

THE    TRUE    HUMORIST 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  was  the  humorist  among 
American  poets,  always  with  a  smile  around  his 
mouth  and  a  twinkle  in  his  eye,  and  a  kindly  little 
half-hidden  joke  in  everything  he  had  to  say.  He 
was  a  humorist  of  the  genuine  good-humored  sort, 
the  "  genial  Autocrat,"  the  kindly  and  obliging 
friend  (for  did  he  not  write  a  poem  on  every  pos 
sible  occasion  at  the  request  of  all  sorts  of  people?) 
How  kind,  how  pathetic,  yet  how  amusing,  are  the 
sweet,  quaint  lines  of  "The  Last  Leaf": 

My  grandmamma  has  said — 
Poor  old  lady,  she  is  dead 

Long  ago— 

That  he  had  a  Roman  nose, 
And  his  cheek  was  like  a  rose 

In  the  snow; 

195 


196 

But  now  his  nose  is  thin, 
And  it  rests  upon  his  chin 

Like  a  staff; 

And  a  crook  is  in  his  back, 
And  a  melancholy  crack 

In  his  laugh. 

I  know  it  is  a  sin 
For  me  to  sit  and  grin 

At  him  here; 

But  the  old  three-cornered  hat 
And  the  breeches,  and  all  that, 

Are  so  queer! 

And  if  I  should  live  to  be 
The  last  leaf  upon  the  tree 

In  the  spring, 

Let  them  smile,  as  I  do  now, 
At  the  old  forsaken  bough 

Where  I  cling. 


Dear  Doctor  Holmes!  He  did  indeed  live  to  be 
the  last  leaf  upon  the  tree  ;  but  to  the  very  end  he 
went  scattering  his  humorous  and  good-humored 
words  among  his  friends  wherever  he  was,  making 
people  happier  as  well  as  wiser,  more  light-hearted 


197 

as  well  as  more  thoughtful,  until  they  turned  from 
crying  to  laughing.  "The  Last  Leaf"  is  a  little 
sad,  notwithstanding  its  lightness  and  fun.  But 
there  is  no  sadness  in  this,  the  funniest  poem  that 
Holmes  ever  wrote: 

THE  HEIGHT  OF  THE  RIDICULOUS 

I  wrote  some  lines  once  on  a  time 

In  wondrous  merry  mood, 
And  thought,  as  usual,  men  would  say 

They  were  exceeding  good. 

They  were  so  queer,  so  very  queer, 

I  laughed  as  I  would  die; 
Albeit  in  the  general  way, 

A  sober  man  am  I. 

I  called  my  servant,  and  he  came; 

How  kind  it  was  of  him 
To  mind  a  slender  man  like  me, 

He  of  the  mighty  limb! 

"These  to  the  printer,"  I  exclaimed, 

And,  in  my  humorous  way, 
I  added  (as  a  trifling  jest), 

"There  '11  be  the  devil  to  pay." 


198 

He  took  the  paper,  and  I  watched, 

And  saw  him  peep  within; 
At  the  first  line  he  read,  his  face 

Was  all  upon  the  grin. 

He  read  the  next,  the  grin  grew  broad, 

And  shot  from  ear  to  ear; 
He  read  the  third,   a  chuckling  noise 

I  now  began  to  hear. 

The  fourth,   he  broke  into  a  roar; 

The  fifth,   his  waistband  split; 
The  sixth,  he  burst  five  buttons  off, 

And  tumbled  in  a  fit. 

Ten  days  and  nights,  with  sleepless  eye, 
I  watched  that  wretched  man; 

And  since,  I  never  dare  to  write 
As  funny  as  I  can. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    BIRTH    OF    OLIVER    HOLMES 

"  In  the  last  week  of  August  used  to  fall  Com 
mencement  day  at  Cambridge,"  remarks  the 
doctor.  "I  remember  that  week  well,  for  some- 


199 

thing  happened  to  me  once  at  that  time,  namely, 
I  was  born." 

It  was  in  the  year  1809 — the  same  year  that 
Gladstone,  Tennyson,  Darwin,  and  Lincoln  were 
born — and  on  August  29.  There  is  still  in  exist 
ence  an  old  and  yellow  almanac  that  belonged  once 
to  Dr.  Abiel  Holmes,  Oliver's  father.  On  the  page 
given  to  August  the  numbers  of  the  days  run  down 
the  left-hand  side,  i,  2,  3,  down  to  28,  29,  30,  31. 
Opposite  29  are  two  little  parallel  lines,  used  as  a 
star  or  mark  of  reference,  and  at  the  bottom  of  the 
page  the  two  little  lines  are  repeated,  and  after 
them  is  written  in  ink  ' '  son  b. "  Of  course  * '  6" 
stands  for  ' '  born. "  A  few  grains  of  black  sand 
were  scattered  over  the  wet  ink  to  prevent  it  from 
blotting,  and  some  of  those  grains  of  sand  may  be 
seen  glistening  there  to  this  day.  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  was  born,  and  the  fact  of  his  birth  was 
thus  recorded  in  the  almanac — "son  b." 

Samuel  Johnson  was  born  in  1 709 ;  or,  as  Holmes 
expresses  it,  ' '  the  year  1 709  was  made  ponder 
ous  and  illustrious  in  English  history  by  his  birth. " 
It  appeared  to  strike  Holmes  as  a  huge  joke  that 


200 


he  had  been  born  just  one  hundred  years  after  Dr. 
Johnson,  and  he  amused  himself  by  following  out 
the  parallel  of  their  lives.  Every  year  he  used 
to  take  down  his  copy  of  Boswell's  '  'Life  of  John 
son"  to  see  what  the  big,  wise  old  grumbler  was 
doing  in  that  year,  just  a  hundred  years  before. 
At  last,  in  the  year  1884,  when  he  came  to  the 
end  of  Johnson's  life,  he  said  that  he  felt  that 
the  incubus  was  raised;  he  had  outlived  the  pon 
derous  parallel. 

The  birth  of  the  "  laughing  philosopher,"  as 
Holmes  has  been  called,  took  place  in  a  very  old 
house  in  Cambridge,  close  to  Harvard  College,  and 
made  famous  in  his  poems  as  "the  old  gambrel- 
roofed  house."  After  the  battle  of  Lexington, 
General-in-chief  Artemas  Ward  had  made  this 
house  the  headquarters  for  the  rallying  of  the 
patriots,  and  General  Warren  had  stopped  there 
on  his  way  to  Bunker  Hill.  George  Washington 
and  other  famous  men  in  those  days  must  often 
have  darkened  its  doors. 

For  years  it  stood,  this  quaint  old  house  in  which 
Holmes  was  born  and  grew  to  manhood,  and  from 


201 

which  he  went  to  Harvard  College;  but  before  he 
died  the  property  was  sold  to  the  University  and 
the  house  was  torn  down.  Holmes  admitted  that 
it  was  "a  case  of  justifiable  domicide."  He  went 
to  pay  it  a  last  visit,  and  "  found  a  ghost  in  each 
and  every  chamber  and  closet,"  and  to  each  he 
said  a  fond  goodbye.  When  the  land  was  leveled 
down  he  did  not  care  to  go  that  way  again. 

Oliver's  father,  Dr.  Abiel  Holmes,  was  an  ortho 
dox  clergyman  of  the  strictest  kind.  But  he  was 
nearly  as  good-natured  as  his  son.  He  was  a  hand 
some  young  man,  and  all  the  girls  used  to  say, 
"  There  goes  Holmes — look  !" 

Colonel  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  once 
found  a  letter  written  by  his  mother  when  she  was 
a  girl,  in  which  she  gives  some  gossip  about  Dr.  Abiel. 
He  sent  it  to  his  friend  Oliver  Wendell  and  you 
can  imagine  the  doctor's  amusement  when  he  read 
the  following  paragraph: 

' '  Now,  mamma,  I  am  going  to  surprise  you. 
Mr.  Abiel  Holmes,  of  Cambridge,  whom  we  so 
kindly  chalked  out  for  Miss  N.  W.,  is  going  to  be 
married  and,  of  all  folks  in  the  world,  guess  who 


202 


to!.  Miss  Sally  Wendell!  I  am  sure  you  will  not 
believe  it.  However,  it  is  an  absolute  fact,  for  Harriet 
and  M.  Jackson  told  Miss  P.  Russell  so,  who  told 
us;  it  has  been  kept  secret  for  six  weeks,  nobody 
knows  for  what.  I  could  not  believe  it  for  some 
time,  and  scarcely  can  now;  however,  it  is  a  fact, 
they  say." 

Evidently  girls  a  hundred  years  ago  wrote  much 
as  they  do  now. 


CHAPTER    III 

AN    AMERICAN  ARISTOCRAT 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  belonged  to  one  of 
the  most  aristocratic  families  of  Boston,  and  he 
seemed  proud  of  it.  But  he  was  an  aristocrat 
of  the  right  sort.  Said  he  :  "  I  go  for  the  man 
with  the  family  portraits  against  the  one  with  the 
twenty-cent  daguerreotype,  unless  I  find  out  that 
the  latter  is  the  better  of  the  two."  He  said  also: 
"I  like  to  see  worthless  rich  people  yield  their 
places  to  deserving  poor  ones,  who,  beginning 
with  sixpence  or  nothing,  come  out  at  last  on 


203 

Beacon  street  and  have  the  sun  come  into  their 
windows  all  the  year  round." 

He  inherited  good  blood  through  three  lines, 
each  of  which  was  represented  in  his  own  name. 
The  Oliver  represents  his  Boston  ' '  blue  blood, " 
which  came  to  him  from  both  his  father's  and  his 
mother's  family.  One  of  his  ancestors  was  Lieu- 
tenant-Governor  Andrew  Oliver,  the  distributor  of 
stamps  in  Boston,  whom  the  people  hated  so, 
though  he  was  one  of  the  richest  of  the  old 
Bostonians,  had  coaches,  a  chariot,  and  negro 
slaves,  as  well  as  good  sterling  silver  plate  that 
exists  in  the  Holmes  and  Oliver  families  to  this 
day. 

The  Wendell  stands  for  the  old  Dutch  family 
of  Wendells,  who  had  moved  from  Albany  to 
Boston,  and  who  came  originally  from  Embden, 
in  East  Friesland,  just  on  the  border  line  between 
Germany  and  the  Netherlands.  The  Wendells 
are  still  a  wealthy  and  influential  family  in  Albany, 
solid  old  Dutch  burghers.  Two  of  Dr.  Holmes's 
Dutch  ancestors  were  shoemakers  ;  one  was  a  fur 
trader. 


2O4 

Another  of  Holmes's  forefathers  on  his  mother's 
side  was  Governor  Thomas  Dudley,  of  whom  the 
famous  Cotton  Mather  wrote  these  verses  : 

"  In  books  a  prodigal,  they  say; 
A  living  cyclopedia  ; 
Of  histories  of  church  and  priest, 
A  full  compendium,  at  least ; 
A  table-talker,  rich  in  sense, 
And  witty  without  wit's  pretense." 

Governor  Dudley's  daughter,  Mrs,  Anne  Brad- 
street,  from  whom  Holmes  was  descended,  was 
the  first  American  poet.  In  1650  she  published 
the  first  volume  of  verse  ever  written  by  an 
American.  It  came  out  in  London,  and  was  enti 
tled  "The  Tenth  Muse  Lately  Sprung  Up  in 
America,"  and  so  popular  was  it  that  it  went 
through  eight  editions.  Among  the  other  descend 
ants  of  this  first  American  poetess  were  William 
Ellery  Channing  and  Wendell  Phillips. 

The  first  Holmes  in  the  genealogy  was  a  lawyer 
of  Gray's  Inn,  London.  John  Holmes  was  born 
near  Boston,  and  went  in  1686  to  help  settle 
Woodstock,  Connecticut.  Holmes's  great-grand- 


205 

mother  Bathsheba,  the  wife  of  David  Holmes, 
was  a  most  remarkable  lady.  She  was  famous  as 
a  doctor  and  nurse. 

They  tell  a  fine  story  of  her  daring,  how  once, 
in  1717,  when  the  snow  almost  buried  the  houses 
after  a  terrible  storm,  she  climbed  out  of  the 
upper  window  of  her  house  in  Woodstock  and 
traveled  on  snowshoes  over  hill  and  dale  to 
Dudley,  Massachusetts,  to  attend  a  sick  woman. 
She  was  accompanied  by  two  men,  who  held  the 
ends  of  a  long  pole,  while  she  held  on  in  the 
middle. 

There  is  another  remarkable  story  told  of  her. 
Those  were  the  days  of  Indian  massacres.  When 
the  men  went  out  to  work  they  took  their  guns 
with  them,  leaving  the  women  in  the  fort  or  gar 
rison  house. 

Once  the  women  when  alone  asked,  "Who  will 
go  to  the  garden  for  vegetables?"  Bathsheba 
Holmes  alone  dared  venture  out.  She  got  her 
vegetables  and  came  back,  but  not  until  years 
afterward  did  she  know  in  what  danger  she  had 
been.  Then  a  solitary,  decrepit  Indian,  broken 


2O6 

in  spirit,  called  at  her  door  to  beg  for  cider,  prom 
ising  to  tell  her  a  story  if  he  got  his  drink. 

She  gave  him  the  cider  and  he  told  his  story. 
It  related  to  the  brave  lady  herself.  He  said  that 
when  she  went  to  the  garden  for  vegetables,  on 
that  occasion  long  ago,  he  had  been  hidden  in 
the  woods  and  had  seen  her,  and  had  determined 
to  kill  her.  He  had  bent  his  bow  and  aimed  his 
arrow  well,  and  in  a  moment  he  would  have  let 
it  fly ;  but  a  mysterious  power  stayed  his  arm  ;  he 
couldn't  shoot.  When  she  had  gone  safely  into 
the  garden  he  called  himself  a  coward  and  deter 
mined  to  have  her  life  when  she  came  out. 
But,  as  she  passed  on  her  way  back  to  the  fort,  the 
same  power  stayed  his  arm  again,  and  he  won 
dered  that  he  could  not  kill  a  squaw.  He  had 
always  thought  that  it  was  the  Great  Spirit  who 
held  his  arm  and  saved  her  life.  It  was  in  this 
mysterious  way  that  God  preserved  the  line  that 
was  finally  to  give  us  the  ' '  genial  autocrat, "  the 
1 '  good  doctor. " 

Our  poet's  grandfather  Holmes  was  a  captain 
in  the  French  and  Indian  war,  and  a  surgeon  in 


207 

the  Revolution,   dying   a    year  or  two  before  the 
close  of  the  latter  war. 

So  you  see  what  a  thorough  aristocrat,  of  the 
true  American  kind,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  was. 


CHAPTER  IV 

CAMBRIDGE 

Holmes,  the  poet,  was  born  and  brought  up  in  a 
poetic  town.  The  old,  yellow,  hip-roofed  house 
stood  close  beside  the  grounds  of  Harvard  College ; 
and  all  around  were  homes  of  men  who  were 
famous  or  were  to  be  famous.  Cambridge  has 
always  been  a  quaint,  quiet,  peaceful,  well-bred 
town.  It  stands  at  the  back  door  of  Boston,  a  half 
hour's  walk  from  that  "hub  of  the  solar  system. " 
Elms  and  poplars  line  its  streets,  its  houses  look 
like  rich  old  relics,  and  everywhere  are  evidences 
of  comfort  and  culture.  Imagine  how  George 
Washington  and  General  Warren,  and  all  the  Rev 
olutionary  heroes  walked  up  and  down  these  streets! 
Already  in  the  time  of  Washington  many  famous 


208 

people  had  lived  there ;  and  after  him  came  a  whole 
procession  of  great  men,  one  after  another — Long 
fellow,  Emerson,  Sumner,  Garrison,  Motley — their 
names  are  too  many  to  mention. 

In  the  center  of  the  town  are  the  Harvard  Col 
lege  buildings,  of  brick  and  stone,  some  old,  some 
new,  surrounded  by  broad  green  lawns,  and  some 
of  them  overrun  with  ivy.  Then,  running  out  from 
the  college  grounds  as  a  hub,  are  streets  like  the 
spokes  of  a  wheel.  In  one  direction  is  Mount 
Auburn  cemetery,  where  hundreds  of  the  famous 
dead  lie  buried,  and  which  is  the  most  beautiful 
cemetery  in  the  United  States.  In  another  direc 
tion  are  Lexington  and  Concord,  while  on  another 
side  the  Charles  River  flows  serenely  along 
towards  Boston  Bay. 

Everywhere  about  are  to  be  seen  college  students 
and  professors.  Here  is  a  dapper  young  man  with 
a  pointed  beard  —  the  new  professor  of  Eng 
lish;  there  is  a  bent  old  man,  white-haired,  totter 
ing  in  his  gait — he  is  the  famous  professor  of  Greek. 
Some  of  the  students  are  gay  and  always  cracking- 
jokes  ;  others  have  deepset  eyes  and  shabby 


209 

clothes — "plugs  "  the  others  call  them,  for  they  are 
very  serious  minded  young  fellows  and  never  waste 
a  moment  of  time.  Then  there  are  many  more 
who  go  singing  and  shouting  through  the  streets  at 
late  hours  in  the  night,  causing  the  people  who  are 
abed  and  asleep  to  be  aroused  from  their  slumbers 
only  to  stick  their  heads  out  of  the  windows  and 
silently  wish  the  young  fellows  were  anywhere  but 
in  Cambridge. 

Such  is  this  famous  college  town ;  and  a  very  en 
joyable  place  it  is  to  live  in.  A  great  many  famous 
people  come  here  to  preach  in  the  churches,  or  to 
lecture,  or  to  speak  at  banquets  and  meetings.  A 
great  many  pretty  girls  come  here  to  see  the  sights 
and  visit  their  brothers — and  look  at  the  crowds  of 
handsome  young  men. 

In  this  old  college  town,  this  young  aristocrat, 
the  descendant  of  patriots  and  governors  and  men 
of  wealth  and  women  of  beauty,  grew  quietly  up 
to  manhood.  He  went  to  school,  learned  his  les 
sons  well,  but  not  too  well,  never  got  into  trouble, 
had  a  good  time,  and  did  not  fret  or  worry  about 
anything,  or  annoy  anybody,  even  his  teachers. 


210 

There  is  a  story  of  a  famous  feruling  that  he  got — 
only  one — and  years  afterward  the  teacher  came  to 
him  to  apologize.  Holmes  in  a  letter  tells  in  his 
humorous  way  how  the  repentant  master  came  and 
introduced  himself  to  the  now  famous  poet,  how  in 
an  embarrassed  manner  he  recalled  old  days,  and 
finally  the  feruling,  and  then  said  he  was  sorry  he 
had  given  it.  Holmes  declared  he  had  richly  de 
served  it;  but  the  schoolmaster  was  glad  to  get 
away.  Apologizing  to  a  pupil  for  whipping  him  is 
indeed  an  embarrassing  thing. 

It  was  not  at  school,  however,  but  in  his  father's 
library  that  Oliver  learned  most.  That  room  in 
the  corner  of  the  old  house  where  were  the  dents 
of  the  British  muskets,  was  the  study,  and  it  was 
filled  from  floor  to  ceiling,  every  wall,  with  books. 
He  says  he  ' '  bumped  about  among  books  from  the 
time  when  he  was  hardly  taller  than  one  of  his 
father's  or  grandfather's  folios. " 

Beside  the  library,  there  was  the  old  garden, 
which  he  himself  has  quaintly  described.  '  'There 
were  old  lilac  bushes  at  the  right  of  the  entrance, 
and  in  the  corner  at  the  left  that  remarkable  moral 


21  I 


pear  tree  which  gave  me  one  of  my  first  lessons  in 
life.  Its  fruit  never  ripened,  but  always  rotted  at 
the  core  just  before  it  began  to  grow  mellow.  It 
was  a  vulgar  specimen  at  best,  and  was  set  there 
no  doubt  to  preach  its  annual  sermon.  But  in  the 
northern  border  was  a  high-bred  Saint  Michael 
pear  tree,  which  taught  a  lesson  that  all  of  gentle 
blood  might  take  to  heart;  for  its  fruit  used  to  get 
hard  and  dark,  and  break  into  unseemly  cracks,  so 
that  when  the  lord  of  the  harvest  came  for  it,  it 
was  like  those  rich  men's  sons  we  see  too  often,  who 
have  never  ripened,  but  only  rusted,  hardened,  and 
shrunken.  We  had  peaches,  lovely  nectarines, 
and  sweet  white  grapes,  growing  and  coming  to 
kindly  maturity  in  those  days. 

"As  for  the  garden  beds,  they  were  cared 
for  by  the  Jonathan  or  Ephraim  of  the  household, 
sometimes  assisted  by  one  Rube,  a  little  old 
Scotch  gardener,  with  a  stippled  face  and  a 
lively  temper.  Nothing  but  old-fashioned  flowers 
in  them  —  hyacinths  pushing  their  green  beaks 
through  as  soon  as  the  snow  was  gone,  or 
earlier;  tulips,  coming  up  in  the  shapes  of  cornu- 


2  12 


copise;  peonies,  butting  their  blunt  way  through  the 
loosened  earth;  lilies,  roses — damask,  white,  blush, 
cinnamon;  larkspurs,  lupines,  and  gorgeous  holly 
hocks. 

''•The  yellow-birds  used  to  be  very  fond  of  some 
sunflowers  that  grew  close  to  the  pear  tree  with 
a  moral.  I  remember  their  flitting  about,  golden 
in  the  golden  light,  over  the  golden  flowers,  as  if 
they  were  flakes  of  curdled  sunshine." 

Oliver  had  a  younger  brother  John,  who  was  as 
light  of  heart  and  full  of  fun  as  he;  and  gay  times 
they  had  together  in  this  quiet  old  town,  and  this 
old  house  with  its  books  and  its  garden.  He  says 
that  as  a  boy  he  was  afraid  of  the  tall  masts 
of  ships  that  used  to  come  up  the  river,  and  he 
would  hide  his  eyes  from  them.  And  he  was 
afraid,  too,  of  a  great  wooden  hand,  the  sign  of  a 
glove-maker  whose  shop  he  sometimes  passed. 

So  in  happiness  and  comfort  he  dreamed  his 
early  years  away,  with  his  brothers  and  sisters  and 
father  and  mother.  He  was  like  a  fine,  luscious 
pear  in  that  old  garden,  ripening  without  rotting  at 
the  core,  or  yet  getting  hard  and  full  of  cracks. 


213 
CHAPTER  V 

SCHOOL    LIFE 

When  young  Oliver  was  ten,  he  was  sent  about 
a  mile  away  to  a  school  where  one  of  the  pupils 
was  Margaret  Fuller,  who  afterwards  became  a 
famous  writer.  As  a  girl,  says  Holmes,  she  had 
the  reputation  of  being  '  'smart. "  Once  she  wrote  a 
school  essay  which  was  shown  to  the  father  of 
Oliver.  It  began,  "It  is  a  trite  remark."  But 
Oliver  didn't  know  what  trite  meant.  It  was  to  him 
a  crushing  discovery  of  her  superiority.  She  was 
stately  and  distant,  as  if  she  had  great  thoughts  of 
her  own ;  she  was  a  diligent  student,  and  read  a  great 
many  of  what  she  called  ' '  naw-vels. "  ' '  A  remark 
able  point  about  her,"  says  Holmes,  "was  that 
long,  flexile  neck,  arching  and  undulating  in 
strange  sinuous  movements,  which  one  who  loved 
her  compared  to  those  of  a  swan,  and  one  who 
loved  her  not  to  the  serpent  that  tempted  Eve." 

After  five  years  at  this  school,  Oliver  was  taken 
to  Andover,  and  left  at  the  house  of  a  professor  in 
the  theological  seminary.  He  went  to  Phillips 


214 

Academy,  where  he  studied  a  year  preparatory  to 
entering  Harvard  College.  There  he  met  a  rosy- 
faced  boy  named  Phineas  Barnes,  and  the  two 
became  great  friends.  Phineas  did  not  go  to  Har 
vard  College,  and  they  were  soon  separated;  but 
they  always  remained  friends,  and  kept  up  a  cor 
respondence  as  long  as  they  lived. 

At  this  time,  says  one  of  his  biographers,  he  was 
an  energetic  and  lively  youngster,  full  of  fun  and 
mischief,  with  tendencies  in  the  way  of  flageolets 
and  flutes,  and  with  a  weakness  for  pistols  and 
guns  and  cigars,  which  latter  he  would  hide  in  the 
barrel  of  the  pistol,  where  his  mother's  eyes  would 
never  care  to  look  for  them. 

One  of  the  objects  of  most  interest  to  the  boys 
at  this  school  was  a  tutor  who  had  had  a  dream 
that  he  would  fall  dead  while  he  was  praying.  He 
regarded  the  dream  as  a  warning,  and  asked  the 
boys  to  come  in  turn  to  see  him  before  he  died. 
Says  Holmes,  "More  than  one  boy  kept  his  eye 
on  him  during  his  devotions,  possessed  by  the  same 
feeling  the  man  had  who  followed  Van  Amburgh 
about  with  the  expectation,  let  us  not  say  hope, 


215 

of  seeing  the  lion  bite  his  head  off  sooner  or 
later." 

Years  later  he  revisited  these  scenes.  He  says 
that  the  ghost  of  a  boy  was  at  his  side  as  he  wan 
dered  among  the  places  he  knew  so  well :  '*  +  Two 
tickets  for  Boston, '  I  said  to  the  man  at  the  station. 

"But  the  little  ghost  whispered,  'When  you 
leave  this  place  you  will  leave  me  behind  you/ 

' '  '  One  ticket  for  Boston,  if  you  please.  Good 
bye,  little  ghost.'" 

At  last  Holmes  returned  to  Cambridge  and 
immediately  entered  Harvard  College,  in  "the 
famous  class  of  '29."  He  had  many  well-known 
classmates,  among  them  the  Rev.  Samuel  Francis 
Smith,  the  Rev.  Dr.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  and 
others.  Smith  was  afterwards  famous  as  the 
author  of  ' '  My  Country,  Tis  of  Thee, "  and  Dr. 
Holmes,  in  one  of  his  poems,  thus  writes  about 
him: 

And  there's  a  nice  youngster  of  excellent  pith, — 
Fate  tried  to  conceal  him  by  naming  him  Smith; 
But  he  shouted  a  song  for  the  brave  and  the  free, — 
Just  read  on  his  medal,  «  My  country '  '  of  theej' 


216 

Charles  Sumnerwas  in  the  next  class  below,  and 
the  famous  historian  Motley  two  classes  below. 
Though  Motley  was  the  youngest  student  in  the 
college,  he  and  Holmes  afterward  became  the  most 
intimate  of  friends,  and  so  remained  through  life; 
and  when  Motley  was  dead  Holmes  wrote  his 
biography. 

Holmes  said  Motley  looked  the  ideal  of  a  young 
poet,  and  he  goes  on  to  describe  him:  "His 
finely  shaped  and  expressive  features,  his  large, 
luminous  eyes,  his  dark  waving  hair,  the  singu 
larly  spirited  set  of  his  head,  his  well  outlined 
figure,  gave  promise  of  manly  beauty." 

After  this  description  of  Motley,  read  the  follow 
ing  which  Holmes  gives  of  himself  in  a  letter  to 
Phineas  Barnes: 

"I,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  Junior  in  Harvard 
University,  am  a  plumeless  biped  of  exactly  five 
feet  three  inches  when  standing  in  a  pair  of  sub 
stantial  boots  made  by  Mr.  Russell  of  this  town, 
having  eyes  which  I  call  blue,  and  hair  which  I  do 
not  know  what  to  call. 

' '  Secondly,  with  regard  to  my  moral  qualities, 


I  am  rather  lazy  than  otherwise,  and  certainly 
do  not  study  as  hard  as  I  ought  to.  I  am  not 
dissipated  and  I  am  not  sedate,  and  when  I  last 
ascertained  my  college  rank  I  stood  in  the  humble 
situation  of  seventeenth  scholar. " 

In  another  letter  written  when  in  college  to  his 
friend  Phineas  he  says: 

«  <  '  What  do  I  do  ?  '  I  read  a  little,  study  a 
little,  smoke  a  little,  and  eat  a  good  deal.  '  What 
do  I  think  ?  '  I  think  that's  a  deuced  hard  ques 
tion.  'What  have  I  been  doing  these  three 
years  ?  '  Why,  I  have  been  growing  a  little  in 
body,  and  I  hope  in  mind;  I  have  been  learning  a 
little  of  almost  everything,  and  a  good  deal  of  some 
things. " 

And  in  still  another  letter,  he  says:  "I  have 
been  writing  poetry  like  a  madman,  and  then  I 
have  been  talking  sentiment  like  a  turtle-dove, 
and  gadding  about  among  the  sweet  faces,  and 
doing  all  such  silly  things  that  spoil  you  for 
everything  else.  This  month  of  May  is  too  good 
for  anything  but  love." 


2l8 

CHAPTER  VI 

COLLEGE    LIFE 

Holmes  was  not  only  born  within  the  present 
grounds  of  Harvard,  he  grew  up  there,  was  a  stu 
dent  of  Harvard,  and  a  loyal  member  of  the 
"  famous  class  of  '29,"  a  lecturer  and  professor  at 
Harvard,  and  he  became  Harvard's  most  famous 
poet  and  man  of  letters,  though  Harvard  has  had 
so  many  that  were  great.  So  the  life  at  Harvard 
College  was  always  a  part  of  his  life;  and  perhaps 
that  is  why  he  was  so  merry. 

College  students  are  great  jokers.  In  the  days 
of  Holmes  the  students  decidedly  objected  to  going 
to  chapel  early  in  the  morning,  rising  as  they  had 
to  do  before  daylight  on  cold  winter  days.  To 
show  that  they  didn't  like  this  idea  of  early  prayers, 
they  would  sometimes  fasten  firecrackers  to  the 
lids  of  the  big  Bible,  so  that  when  the  president 
or  a  professor  came  to  lead  the  exercises  and 
opened  the  book,  they  would  go  off  with  a  snap. 

In  those  days,  too,  they  had  only  candles,  and 
as  prayers  were  held  before  daylight' the  chapel 


219 

candles  had  to  be  lighted.  Sometimes  the  stu 
dents  would  put  pieces  of  lead  where  the  wick 
ought  to  be,  and  when  the  candles  burned  down 
to  the  lead  the  lights  went  oat,  of  course  leaving 
the  chapel  in  darkness.  At  other  times  the  presi 
dent  would  be  startled  on  entering  the  pulpit  by 
seeing  a  pig's  head  standing  upright  and  bristly  on 
his  desk. 

The  rooms  in  the  college  dormitories  were  very 
poorly  furnished.  Instead  of  matches  they  had 
flint  and  steel  and  a  tinder-box;  and  in  almost 
every  room  was  a  cannon  ball,  which  the  boys 
would  heat  red-hot  and  set  on  a  metal  frame  of 
some  sort  to  help  keep  the  room  warm.  Some 
times  in  the  middle  of  the  night  a  wicked  student 
or  two  would  send  one  of  these  cannon  balls  rolling, 
bump,  bump,  bump,  down  the  stairs,  waking  every 
one  and  getting  the  proctor  out  of  bed.  Some 
times,  too,  the  cannon  ball  was  hot  and  burned  the 
ringers  of  the  proctor  when  he  tried  to  pick  it  up. 
Then  woe  to  the  young  lad  who  was  caught  and 
proved  to  be  the  culprit. 

In   college,    Holmes   belonged    to   two   or   three 


220 

clubs.  One  was  the  Hasty  Pudding  Club,  which 
met  in  the  rooms  of  the  members.  A  worthy  old 
lady  of  the  village  called  Sister  Stimson  prepared 
the  pudding  in  two  huge  pots;  and  the  "providers" 
of  the  evening  would  sling  these,  filled  with  the 
boiling  mush,  on  a  stout  pole,  and,  resting  the  ends 
upon  their  shoulders,  mount  gallantly  to  the  room 
where  the  members  were  assembled,  often  in  the 
third  or  fourth  story.  A  bowl  of  hasty  pudding 
was  always  carried  to  the  officer  in  the  entry,  as  a 
sort  of  peace  offering;  and  when  the  members  had 
eaten  as  much  as  they  could,  and  had  told  all  the 
stories  they  had  to  tell,  the  occupants  of  nearby 
rooms  were  invited  to  help  finish  up  the  repast, 

Another  club  to  which  he  belonged  was  called  the 
"  Med.  Facs.,"  and  each  member  or  officer  had  the 
title  of  a  supposed  professor  in  the  Medical  Faculty 
of  the  University.  The  first  meeting  of  the  year 
was  held  in  an  upper  room,  draped  in  black  cotton 
and  decorated  with  death's-heads  and  cross-bones 
in  chalk;  a  table,  also  hung  in  black,  extended 
lengthwise  through  the  room.  In  the  center  sat 
the  mock  president  and  about  him  were  the  "pro- 


221 

fessors"  and  ' 'assistant  professors,"  all  in  black. 
Near  at  hand  stood  two  policemen,  usually  the  two 
strongest  men  in  the  class,  dressed  in  flesh-colored 
tights.  On  the  stairs  outside  were  crowds  of 
Juniors,  from  which  twenty  or  thirty  were  to  be 
initiated  into  the  society.  This  initiation  consisted 
usually  in  answering  disagreeable  questions  put  by 
the  '  'professors, "  or  in  doing  such  things  as 
standing  on  one's  head,  crawling  about  the  floor, 
singing  Mother  Goose  melodies,  or  making  a 
Latin  or  Greek  oration. 

College  Commencement  in  those  days  was  like 
a  country  fair.  The  people  pitched  tents  on  the 
western  side  of  the  college  yard  (for  there  were  then 
no  hotels,  and  boarding  was  expensive),  and  opposite 
them  were  various  stands  and  shows,  making  a 
street  which  by  nightfall  was  paved  with  water 
melon  rinds,  peachstones,  and  various  refuse,  on  a 
ground  of  straw, — all  flavored  with  rum  and  tobacco 
smoke. 

Holmes  himself  has  well  "described  this  festival 
of  the  college  year: 

"The  fair  plain  (the  Common),  not  then,  as  now, 


222 

cut  up  into  cattle  pens  by  the  ugliest  of  known 
fences,  swarmed  with  the  joyous  crowds.  The 
ginger-beer  carts  rang  their  bells  and  popped  their 
bottles,  the  fiddlers  played  Money  Musk  over  and 
over  and  over,  the  sailors  danced  the  double-shuffle, 
the  gentlemen  of  the  city  capered  in  rusty  jigs,  the 
town  ladies  even  took  a  part  in  the  lusty  exercise,  the 
confectioners  rattled  red  and  white  sugar  plums, 
long  sticks  of  candy,  sugar  and  burnt  almonds  into 
their  brass  scales,  the  wedges  of  pie  were  driven 
into  splitting  mouths,  the  mountains  of  (clove- 
sprinkled)  hams  were  cut  down  as  Fort  Hill  is  being 
sliced  to-day;  the  hungry  feeders  sat  still  and  con 
centrated  about  the  boards  where  the  grosser  viands 
were  served,  while  the  milk  flowed  from  cracking 
cocoanuts,  the  fragrant  muskmelons  were  cloven 
into  new-moon  crescents,  and  the  great  water 
melons  showed  their  cool  pulps  sparkling  and  roseate 
as  the  dewy  fingers  of  Aurora. " 

And  besides  all  this,  there  were  the  orations  of 
the  students,  and  the  speeches  of  old  graduates 
who  now  came  back  famous,  and  all  the  bustle  and 
importance  of  the  college  men  themselves,  hurry- 


223 

ing  to  entertain  their  fair  lady  friends,  their  mothers, 
and  their  fathers,  who  had  come  up  to  see  how 
they  behaved. 

CHAPTER  VII 

A    BUDDING    POET 

We  have  already  seen  in  one  of  Holmes-'s  letters 
to  Phineas  Barnes  that  while  in  college  he  was 
1  'writing  poetry  like  mad."  In  the  appendix  to 
the  latest  complete  edition  of  his  poems  you  will 
find  some  lines  translated  from  the  ^Eneid  while 
he  was  a  student  at  Andover,  not  yet  sixteen  years 
old.  In  college  he  was  poet  to  the  Hasty  Pudding 
Club;  had  a  poem  at  Exhibition,  one  at  Commence 
ment,  and  was  elected  class  poet;  besides  that,  he 
joined  several  classmates  in  a  volume  of  satirical 
poems  on  the  first  regular  art  exhibition  in  Boston. 

When  he  finished  his  college  course  he  studied 
law  for  a  year,  though  his  father  rather  wished  him 
to  be  a  clergyman.  Says  he,  "  I  might  have  been 
a  clergyman  myself,  for  aught  I  know,  if  a  certain 
clergyman  had  not  looked  and  talked  so  like  an 


undertaker. "  Think  of  the  little  smooth-voiced  joker 
in  the  pulpit!  In  another  place  he  says,  "How 
grandly  the  procession  of  old  clergymen  who  filled 
our  pulpit  from  time  to  time,  and  passed  the  day 
under  our  roof,  marches  before  my  closed  eyes!" 
You  must  remember  that  Holmes  was  the  son  of 
the  orthodox  clergyman  of  Cambridge,  and  these 
were  the  men  who  exchanged  pulpits  with  his  father. 
At  first,  as  an  experiment,  he  studied  law  for  a 
year;  but  he  did  not  work  very  hard.  He  was 
writing  poetry.  A  paper  called  the  Collegian  was 
started,  and  he  contributed  twenty-five  or  more 
poems  to  it,  among  which  were  some  of  his  fun 
niest  and  best.  "The  Last  Leaf"  and  "The 
Height  of  the  Ridiculous  "  were  among  the  work  of 
that  first  poetic  year  of  his.  He  never  thought 
much  of  these  poems,  though  some  people  consider 
them  quite  as  good  as  the  poems  of  the  famous 
Thomas  Hood,  who  wrote — 

"Take  her  up  tenderly, 

Lift  her  with  care, — 
Fashioned  so  slenderly, 
Young  and  so  fair!" 


225 

Because  he  didn't  like  them,  or  thought  them 
too  rollicking,  he  did  not  reprint  many  of  them. 
Here  is  one,  perhaps  the  first  of  his  poems  ever 
printed  with  his  name,  which  appeared  in  Feb 
ruary,  1830,  under  the  title  "Runaway  Ballad": 

I 

Wake  from  thy  slumbers,  Isabel,  the  stars  are  in  the  sky, 
And  night  has  hung  her  silver  lamp,  to  light  her  altar  by; 
The  flowers  have  closed  their  faded  leaves,  and  drooped 

upon  the  plain; 
Oh!  wake  thee,  and   their  dying  hues  shall   blush  to  life 

again. 

II 

Get   up!  get  up!  Miss   Polly  Jones,    the  tandem's   at  the 

door; 
Get  up  and  shake   your  lovely  bones,    it's  twelve   o'clock 

and  more; 

The  chaises  they  have  rattled  by,  and  nothing  stirs  around, 
And  all  the  world  but  you  and  me  are  snoring  safe  and 

sound. 

Ill 

I've  got  my  uncle's  bay,  and  trotting  Peggy,  too, 
I've  lined  their  tripes  with  oats  and  hay,  and  now  for  love 
and  you! 


226 

The  lash  is  curling  in  the  air,  and  I  am  at  your  side; 
To-morrow  you  are  Mrs.  Snaggs,  my  bold   and  blooming 
bride. 

Here  is  another,  entitled  "  Romance": 

Oh!  she  was  a  maid  of  a  laughing  eye, 
And  she  lived  in  a  garret  cold  and  high; 
And  he  was  a  threadbare,  whiskered  beau, 
And  he  lived  in  a  cellar  damp  and  low. 

But  not  all  his  early  poems  were  nonsense  like 
these.  One  day,  in  the  fall  of  1830,  he  read  in  the 
Boston  Advertiser  a  paragraph  saying  that  the 
Navy  Department  at  Washington  intended  to 
break  up  the  frigate  Constitution,  which  had 
fought  so  bravely  in  the  War  of  1812,  and  won 
such  glory  for  the  American  people.  Immediately 
he  wrote  the  following  poem,  which  stands  at  the 
beginning  of  his  collected  works: 

OLD  IRONSIDES. 

Ay,  tear  her  tattered  ensign  down! 

Long  has  it  waved  on  high, 
And  many  an  eye  has  danced  to  see 

The  banner  in  the  sky; 


227 

Beneath  it  rung  the  battle  shout, 

And  burst  the  cannon's  roar; — 
The  meteor  of  the  ocean  air 

Shall  sweep  the  clouds  no  more. 

Her  deck,  once  red  with  heroes'  blood, 

Where  knelt  the  vanquished  foe, 
When  winds  were  hurrying  o'er  the  flood 

And  waves  were  white  below, 
No  more  shall  feel  the  victor's  tread 

Or  know  the  conquered  knee;  - 
The  harpies  of  the  shore  shall  pluck 

The  eagle  of  the  sea! 

Oh,  better  that  her  shattered  hulk 

Should  sink  beneath  the  wave; 
Her  thunders  shook  the  mighty  deep, 

And  there  should  be  her  grave; 
Nail  to  the  mast  her  holy  flag, 

Set  every  threadbare  sail, 
And  give  her  to  the  god  of  storms, 

The  lightning  and  the  gale! 

This  stirring  poem  was  published  on  the  next 
day  but  one,  and  was  immediately  copied  into 
nearly  every  newspaper  in  the  United  States. 
Copies  were  even  printed  as  handbills  and  distrib- 


228 

uted  about  the  city  of  Washington.  Because 
the  people  felt  so  badly  about  it,  the  Navy 
Department  at  last  decided  not  to  break  up  Old 
Ironsides. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

DOCTOR    HOLMES 

Young  Mr.  Holmes  wrote  so  much  poetry  he 
had  little  time  for  law  during  the  twelve  months 
after  his  graduation.  So  at  the  end  of  the  year 
he  gave  up  law  and  began  to  study  medicine.  At 
first  he  felt  his  heart  come  up  into  his  throat  at 
the  sight  of  skeletons  grinning  at  him  from  the 
walls;  and  his  cheek  grew  pale  as  the  hospital 
sheets  when  he  passed  among  the  sufferers  and 
saw  the  dead  and  dying,  or  helped  to  perform  a 
surgical  operation  ;  but  after  a  time  these  things 
were  to  him  as  nothing,  mere  every-day  affairs. 

About  the  same  time,  too,  he  became  a  collector 
of  rare  old  books.  In  1833,  when  he  had  finished 
his  medical  education  as  far  as  he  could  at  home, 
he  went  to  Europe  to  complete  his  studies  in  the 


22Q 

hospitals  of  Paris  and  other  cities.  He  remained 
there  two  years  and  a  half,  and  in  that  time  he 
had  a  chance  to  pick  up  some  rare  and  queer  old 
volumes. 

He  returned  a  full-fledged  doctor;  but  he  seems 
to  have  felt  that  he  had  neglected  poetry  long 
enough,  and  soon  published  his  first  book,  which 
is  dated  1836.  He  had  been  invited  to  read  a 
long  and  serious  poem  before  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  society  of  Harvard,  and  this  he  made  the 
chief  poem  of  his  little  volume,  including  more 
than  forty  others.  Beside  the  early  humorous 
poems  which  we  have  already  referred  to,  there 
was  the  well-known  poem  "The  September 
Gale,"  beginning, — 

I'm   not    a    chicken  ;     I    have    seen 
Full    many   a    chill    September,— 

and  ending, — 

And  not  till  fate  has  cut  the  last 

Of  all  my  earthly  stitches, 
This  aching  heart  shall  cease  to  mourn 

My  loved,   my  long-lost  breeches  ! 


230 

George  Ticknor  Curtis  describes  the  youtnful 
poet  in  the  following  bright  paragraph: 

"Dr.  Holmes  had  then  just  returned  from 
Europe.  Extremely  youthful  in  his  appearance, 
bubbling  over  with  the  mingled  humor  and  pathos 
that  have  always  marked  his  poetry,  and  spark 
ling  with  coruscations  of  his  peculiar  genius,  his 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  poem  of  1836,  delivered  with  a 
clear,  ringing  enunciation,  which  imparted  to  the 
hearers  his  own  enjoyment  of  his  thoughts  and 
expressions,  delighted  a  cultivated  audience  to  a 
very  uncommon  degree. " 

Here  is  another  description  of  the  reading  of 
the  same  poem,  which  was  printed  in  The  Atlantic 
Monthly: 

"A  brilliant,  airy,  and  spirituMe  manner, 
varied  with  striking  flexibility  to  the  changing 
sentiment  of  the  poem, — now  deeply  impassioned, 
now  gayly  joyous  and  nonchalant,  and  anon 
springing  up  almost  into  an  actual  flight  of  rhap 
sody, — rendered  the  delivery  of  this  poem  a  rich, 
nearly  a  dramatic,  entertainment,  such  as  we  have 
rarely  witnessed." 


231 

Abraham  Lincoln  read  and  admired  the  poems 
in  this  first  little  volume.  Once,  in  conversation, 
he  remarked,  "  There  are  some  quaint,  queer 
verses,  written,  I  think,  by  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes,  entitled  'The  Last  Leaf,'  one  of  which 
is  to  me  inexpressibly  touching."  He  then  re 
peated  the  poem  from  memory,  and  as  he  finished 
this  much-admired  stanza, — 

The  mossy  marbles   rest 

On  the  lips  that  he  has  prest 

In   their  bloom  ; 

And  the  names  he  loved  to  hear 
Have  been  carved  for  many  a  year 

On  the  tomb, — 

he  said,  "For  pure  pathos,  in  my  judgment, 
there  is  nothing  finer  than  those  six  lines  in  the 
English  language."  Perhaps  Lincoln  was  thinking 
of  the  lonely  grave  of  his  own  first  love  in  Illinois, 
for  he  once  said,  < '  Oh,  I  cannot  bear  the  thought 
of  her  lying  out  there  with  the  storms  beating 
upon  her." 

Holmes,   having  received   his    degree    of  M.D. 
from    Harvard    College,    began    practicing    med- 


232 

icine  in  Boston.  He  was  young  and  popular, 
he  was  related  to  the  best  families,  and  he  had 
the  best  medical  education  the  world  could  give. 
The  result  was  that  he  had  plenty  of  practice. 
He  didn't  believe  much  in  giving  medicine,  and 
his  doses  were  usually  very  small.  He  would 
enter  the  sick-room  with  a  bright,  cheerful  smile 
on  his  face  that  of  itself  made  the  patient  soon 
feel  better.  In  one  of  his  books  he  gives  this 
maxim  :  * '  When  visiting  a  patient  enter  the  sick 
room  at  once,  without  keeping  the  patient  in  the 
torture  of  suspense  by  discussing  the  case  with 
others  in  another  room." 

Prize  medals  were  offered  in  Boston  for  medical 
essays,  and  in  the  first  two  years  after  he  began 
practicing  medicine  he  gained  three  of  these 
medals.  In  1838,  after  two  years  in  Boston,  he 
was  appointed  professor  of  anatomy  and  physiol 
ogy  in  Dartmouth  College.  He  remained  there  two 
years,  at  the  end  of  which  time  he  resigned.  He 
then  came  back  to  Boston  and  married  the  daugh 
ter  of  Judge  Charles  Jackson.  He  and  his  wife 
took  a  house  in  the  very  heart  of  Boston,  in  a 


233 

little  court  leading  out  of  Tremont  street,  and 
there  they  lived  for  nearly  twenty  years.  ' ' When 
he  first  entered  that  house  two  shadows  glided 
over  the  threshold ;  five  lingered  in  the  doorway 
when  he  passed  through  it  for  the  last  time, — and 
one  of  the  shadows  was  claimed  by  its  owner  to 
be  longer  than  his  own."  Those  other  shadows 
were  his  children,  his  eldest  son  being  taller  than 
the  doctor  himself.  In  the  surrounding  houses 
there  had  been  sorrow  and  disappointment  and 
death.  ' '  The  whole  drama  of  life  was  played  in 
that  stock  company's  theatre  of  a  dozen  houses, 
one  of  which  was  his,  and  no  deep  sorrow  or  severe 
calamity  ever  entered  his  dwelling.  Peace  be  to 
those  walls,  forever, "  the  professor  said,  ' '  for 
the  many  pleasant  years  he  has  passed  within 
them." 

He  had 'two  sons  and  a  daughter.  The  oldest 
son  was  named  Oliver  Wendell,  and  became  a 
judge.  The  other  son,  Edward,  was  also  a  law 
yer.  The  daughter,  named  after  his  wife  Amelia 
Jackson,  married  Mr.  John  Turner  Sargent,  and 
it  was  at  her  country  home  at  Beverly  Farms  that 


234 

Holmes  spent  much  of  his  time  toward  the  end  of 
his  life. 

He  practiced  medicine  again  in  Boston  for  seven 
years,  when  he  accepted  an  appointment  as  pro 
fessor  of  anatomy  and  physiology  in  Harvard 
Medical  School.  This  professorship  he  held  for 
thirty-five  years,  when  he  resigned  on  account  of 
old  age. 

He  had  a  beautiful  country  home  called  Canoe 
Place,  in  the  Berkshire  Hills,  in  western  Massa 
chusetts.  There  he  spent  "seven  happy  summer 
vacations,  which, "  he  declares,  ' '  stand  in  his 
memory  like  the  seven  golden  candlesticks  seen  in 
the  beatific  vision  of  the  holy  dreamer."  Some 
famous  literary  people  lived  near  by,  among  them 
Herman  Melville,  the  novelist  and  traveler,  and 
not  far  away  were  Miss  Sedgwick  and  Fanny 
Kemble,  and  for  a  short  time  Hawthorne.  The 
doctor's  dwelling  was  a  modest  one,  he  tells  us,— 
"not  glorious,  yet  not  unlovely  in  the  youth  of  its 
drab  and  mahogany, — full  of  great  and  little  boys' 
playthings."  This  place  had  come  to  him  by 
inheritance  from  his  mother, 


.      235 
CHAPTER   IX 

THE     AUTOCRAT 

In  1852  Holmes  delivered  a  course  of  lectures 
on  the  "English  Poets  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury," — Wordsworth,  Moore,  Keats,  Shelley,  and 
others.  At  the  end  of  each  lecture  he  read  a 
poem,  and  these  poems  now  appear  in  his  collected 
works  as  "After  a  Lecture  on  Wordsworth," 
' '  After  a  Lecture  on  Moore, "  etc. 

In  a  letter  to  an  official  he  states  the  terms  on 
which  he  is  willing  to  give  this  course  of  lectures  in 
various  towns  and  cities: 

< '  My  terms  for  a  lecture,  when  I  stay  over 
night,  are  fifteen  dollars  and  expenses,  a  room 
with  a  fire  in  it,  in  a  public  house,  and  a  mattress  to 
sleep  on, — not  a  feather  bed.  As  you  write  in 
your  individual  capacity,  I  tell  you  at  once  all  my 
habitual  exigencies.  I  am  afraid  to  sleep  in  a  cold 
room  ;  I  can't  sleep  on  a  feather  bed  ;  I  will  not 
go  to  private  houses  ;  and  I  have  fixed  upon  the 
sum  mentioned  as  what  it  is  worth  to  go  away  for 
the  night  to  places  that  cannot  pay  more." 


236 

The  landlady  in  the  ''Autocrat  of  the  Break 
fast  Table "  also  has  something  to  say  about  his 
lectures : 

"He  was  a  man  that  loved  to  stick  around 
home  as  much  as  any  cat  you  ever  see  in  your  life. 
He  used  to  say  he'd  as  lief  have  a  tooth  pulled  as 
go  away  anywheres.  Always  got  sick,  he  said, 
when  he  went  away,  and  never  sick  when  he 
didn't.  Pretty  nigh  killed  himself  goin'  about 
lecturing  two  or  three  winters, — talkin'  in  cold 
country  lyceums, — as  he  used  to  say, — goin'  home 
to  cold  parlors  and  bein'  treated  to  cold  apples  and 
cold  water  ;  and  then  goin'  up  into  a  cold  bed  in  a 
cold  chamber,  and  comin'  home  next  mornin'  with 
a  cold  in  his  head  as  bad  as  the  horse  distemper.'' 

Perhaps  this  is  why  Holmes  was  not  more  of  a 
traveler,  going  to  Europe  but  twice,  and  hardly 
ever  leaving  his  birthplace  of  Cambridge  or  his 
home  in  Boston. 

So  twenty  years  passed  by  after  he  published 
his  first  volume  of  poems  before  he  did  anything 
else  very  literary.  His  fellow  professor  Long 
fellow  had  become  famous  ;  and  so  had  Haw- 


237 

thorne  ;  and  so,  too,  had  Lowell  and  Whittier. 
But  Holmes  seemed  to  have  no  desire  for  fame. 
He  had  written  a  few  amusing  poems,  and  delivered 
some  lectures. 

But  when  the  Atlantic  Monthly  was  about  to  be 
started,  all  the  literary  folk  turned  to  Holmes  and 
said,  "  That  jolly  old  fellow  could  write  something 
good,  if  he  only  would. " 

The  young  publishers,  Phillips  &  Sampson,  were 
enthusiastic  about  the  new  magazine.  Lowell  was 
chosen  editor,  and  Francis  H.  Underwood  was 
assistant,  though  the  idea  was  originally  his. 
They  called  in  Longfellow  and  Emerson,  and 
Motley  and  Holmes.  This  distinguished  company 
met  at  a  dinner  and  talked  over  the  new  project. 
Holmes  suggested  the  name  Atlantic  Monthly. 
Longfellow  would  contribute  a  poem  now  and 
then,  and  Emerson  an  essay  from  time  to  time  ; 
but  poems  and  essays  do  not  fill  up  a  magazine 
very  fast.  So  Lowell  determined  to  get  some 
thing  from  Holmes,  some  light,  gossipy  prose, 
that  should  continue  on  from  month  to  month. 
The  doctor  remembered  that  he  had  written  some 


238 

papers  twenty-five  years  before  for  the  New  Eng 
land  Magazine,  and  he  determined  to  ' '  shake  the 
same  bough  again"  and  see  what  fruit  he  could 
get.  So  he  began  where  he  had  left  off  all  those 
years  before  with  an  "  As-I-was-saying."  And  for 
a  year  or  more,  every  month  in  the  Atlantic,  the 
' '  Autocrat "  gave  his  opinions  of  life,  cracked  his 
little  jokes  on  men  and  things,  recited  a  poem,  or 
gossiped  with  his  landlady  and  fellow  boarders. 
And  each  month  that  distinguished  literary  com 
pany  met  at  some  hotel  or  restaurant  in  Boston 
and  had  a  dinner  which  was  a  feast  of  reason  and 
good  things  for  the  mind  and  heart  as  well  as  for 
the  stomach  ;  and  Holmes  was  the  wit  and  soul  of 
every  banquet. 

At  last  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  had  come  before 
the  world  as  a  great  poet  and  a  great  humorist. 
The  "Autocrat"  is  the  very  soul  of  humor,  so 
genial,  so  wise  in  his  good  advice,  so  gay  in  his 
good  nature,  so  light  and  sparkling  and  kind. 
Now  was  published  "The  Deacon's  Masterpiece, 
or,  The  Wonderful  One-Hoss  Shay";  and  by  its 
side  that  most  beautiful  of  all  the  poems  Holmes 


239 

ever  wrote,  "The  Chambered  Nautilus."  When 
the  Princess  of  Wales  asked  him  to  write  in  her 
album,  he  copied  the  last  verse  of  "The  Cham 
bered  Nautilus, "  as  he  had  done  in  the  album  of 
many  a  subject  of  our  great  republic.  Listen  ! 
Holmes  could  be  stately  and  beautiful  as  well  as 
gay  and  humorous  : 

Build  thee  more  stately  mansions.  O  my  soul, 

As  the  swift  seasons  roll! 

Leave  thy  low-vaulted  past! 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last, 
Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast, 

Till  thou  at  length  art  free, 
Leaving  thine  outgrown  shell  by  life's  unresting  seal 

If  you  wish  to  know  the  wise  things  Holmes 
said  about  anything  and  everything,  read  ''The 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table."  Here  are  a 
few  bright  sayings  which  you  will  not  find  in  that 
book,  but  which  will  give  you  an  idea  of  the  kind 
of  things  with  which  the  volume  is  filled  : 

"An  Indian  is  a  few  instincts  on  legs,  and  hold 
ing  a  tomahawk." 

''If  a  doctor    has  the    luck  to  find  out  a  new 


240 

malady,  it  is  tied  to  his  name  like  a  tin  kettle  to  a 
dog's  tail,  and  he  goes  clattering  down  the  highway 
of  fame  to  posterity  with  his  seolian  attachment 
following  at  his  heels." 

Gunpowder  :  '  *  Chemistry  seals  up  a  few  dark 
grains  in  iron  vases,  and  lo!  at  the  touch  of  a 
single  spark,  rises  in  smoke  and  flames  a  mighty 
Afrit  with  a  voice  like  thunder  and  an  arm  that 
shatters  like  an  earthquake." 

''The  scholar's  mind  is  furnished  with  shelves 
like  his  library.  Each  book  knows  its  place  in  the 
brain  as  well  as  against  the  wall  or  in  the  alcove. 
His  consciousness  is  doubled  by  the  books  which 
encircle  him,  as  the  trees  that  surround  a  lake 
repeat  themselves  in  its  unruffled  waters.  Men 
talk  of  the  nerve  that  runs  to  the  pocket,  but  one 
who  loves  his  books,  and  has  lived  long  with  them, 
has  a  nervous  filament  which  runs  from  his  sen- 
sorium  to  every  one  of  them. " 

' '  Slang — is  the  way  in  which  a  lazy  adult  shifts 
the  trouble  of  finding  any  exact  meaning  in  his  (or 
her)  conversation  on  the  other  party.  If  both 
talkers  are  indolent,  all  their  talk  lapses  into  the 


241 

vague  generalities  of  childhood.  It  is  a  prevalent 
social  vice  of  the  time,  as  it  has  been  of  times  that 
are  past." 

Perhaps  the  most  famous  expression  in  the 
"Autocrat"  is  that  in  which  he  calls  Boston 
"the  hub  of  the  solar  system"  (often  wrongly 
quoted  as  "the  hub  of  the  universe"). 

' '  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table  "  was 
such  a  success  that  it  sold  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
by  the  thousands  of  copies.  The  editors  and  pub 
lishers  both  said,  "This  is  just  the  thing  :  give  us 
more,  give  us  more."  So  Holmes  wrote  another 
book,  which  he  called  "The  Professor  at  the 
Breakfast  Table";  and  then  "The  Poet  at  the 
Breakfast  Table. " 

In  the  "Autocrat"  Holmes  said  that  every  man 
had  in  him  the  writing  of  at  least  one  novel.  As 
the  demand  for  his  work  was  great,  he  thought  he 
would  write  one.  So  he  produced  ' '  Elsie  Venner, 
a  Romance  of  Destiny."  It  is  a  strange  story  of 
a  girl  who  has  the  nature  of  a  snake.  Holmes 
had  heard  of  cases  like  that  of  Elsie  Venner,  and 
he  worked  her  story  out  in  a  scientific  manner. 


242 

We  read  it  as  if  it  were  really  true,  and  it  exer 
cises  a  weird  fascination  over  us. 

Later  he  wrote  another  novel,  entitled  "The 
Guardian  Angel." 

CHAPTER    X 

"THE     FAMOUS    CLASS    OF    '29" 

Holmes  was  the  poet  of  the  occasional,  if  ever 
there  was  one.  If  anybody  held  a  meeting  about 
anything,  and  Holmes  was  asked  to  read  a  poem, 
he  kindly  consented  to  do  so.  Who  ever  heard  of 
opening  a  meeting  of  a  medical  society  with  a  poem? 
Yet  Holmes  read  an  original  poem  at  many  a 
meeting  of  the  Massachusetts  Medical  Society. 

It  was  at  the  yearly  meeting  of  "the  famous 
class  of  '29"  that  he  read  his  poems  oftenest. 
Every  year  for  sixty  years,  this  loyal  poet  remained 
true  to  class  traditions.  A  poem  from  Holmes 
was  always  expected,  and  the  class  always  got  it. 

A  college  class  is  a  band  of  friends,  friends  who 
have  passed  the  merriest  years  of  their  lives 
together.  They  come  to  college  from  the  country 
over,  from  homes  poor  and  rich,  distant  and  near. 


243 

For  four  years  they  live  together,  all  on  an  equal 
footing,  all  together  blooming  into  manhood. 
Then  they  scatter  to  their  various  duties  in  the 
world.  One  is  a  lawyer,  another  a  journalist, 
another  a  clergyman,  another  a  doctor,  and  others 
are  business  men.  Yet  how  can  they  ever  forget 
those  happy  years  together? 

Each  year  all  those  members  of  the  class  of  '29 
who  could  do  so  would  come  together  at  Com 
mencement  time  to  renew  old  memories.  Some  of 
the  class  were  perhaps  over  seas  and  in  foreign 
lands;  some,  alas!  were  dead.  So,  as  the  years 
passed  by,  the  number  grew  smaller  and  smaller, 
and  the  gathering  became  sadder  and  sadder;  yet 
none  of  them  would  have  missed  it. 

The  first  class  poem  in  Holmes's  works  is  en 
titled  "Bill  and  Joe,"  and  begins  thus: 

Come,  dear  old  comrades,  you  and  I 
Will  steal  an  hour  from  days  gone  by, 
The  shining  days  when  life  was  new, 
And  all  was  bright  with  morning  dew, 
The  lusty  days  of  long  ago, 
When  you  were  Bill  and  I  was  Joe. 


244 

Most  of  these  verses  are  of  sad  memories  of 
happy  times  gone  forever: 

Where,  oh,  where  are  the  visions  of  morning, 

Fresh  as  the  dews  of  our  prime? 
Gone,  like  the  tenants  that  quit  without  warning, 

Down  the  back  entry  of  time. 

But  some  are  poems  of  dear  friendship  and 
pleasure  at  seeing  friends  again,  like  this,  called 
' '  Indian  Summer  " : 

You'll  believe  me,  dear  boys,  'tis  a  pleasure  to  rise, 
With  a  welcome  like  this  in  your  darling  old  eyes; 
To  meet  the  same  smiles  and  to  hear  the  same  tone 
Which  have  greeted  me  oft  in  the  years   that  have  flown. 

One  poem  entitled  ' '  The  Boys"  is  well  worth 
remembering,  especially  the  last  stanzas: 

Then  here's  to  our  boyhood,  its  gold  and  its  gray! 
The  stars  of  its  winter,  the  dews  of  its  May! 
And  when  we  have  done  with  our  life-lasting  toys. 
Dear  Father,  take  care  of  thy  children,  the  Boys! 

During  the  times  of  the  great  Civil  War  the 
poems  were  mostly  of  a  patriotic  kind.  Here,  for 


245 

instance,  is  the  way  he  opens  his  poem  in   1862, 
entitled  "The  Good  Ship  Union  ": 

'Tis  midnight:  through  my  troubled  dream 

Loud  wails  the  tempest's  cry; 
Before  the  gale,  with  tattered  sail, 

A  ship  goes  plunging  by. 
What  name?     Where  bound? — The  rocks  around 

Repeat  the  loud  halloo. 
— The  good  ship  Union,  Southward  bound: 

God  help  her  and  her  crew  ! 

In  1878  he  wrote  a  poem  on   "The  Last  Sur 
vivor,"  which  opens  with  these  beautiful  lines: 

Yes!  the  vacant  chairs  tell  sadly  we  are  going,  going  fast, 
And  the  thought  comes  strangely  o'er  me,  Who  will  live  to 
be  the  last  ? 

Let  us  add  one  more  verse,  a  humorous  verse 
in  which  the  joker  pretends  he's  not  so  very  old: 

I  don't  think  I  feel  much  older;  I'm  aware  I'm  rather  gray; 
But  so  are  many  young  folks,  —I  meet  'em  every  day. 
I  confess  I'm  more  particular  in  what  I  eat  and  drink, 
But  one's  taste  improves  with  culture;  that  is  all  it  means, 
I  think. 


246 

Can  you  read  as  once  you  used  to?  Well,  the  printing  is  so  bad, 
No  young  folks'  eyes  can  read  it  like  the  books  that  once 

we  had. 
Are  you  quite  as  auick  of  hearing?     Please  to  say  that  once 

again. 
Don 7  1 use  plain  words,  your  Reverence?     Yes,  I  often  use 

a  cane. 

Ah,  well, — I  know — at  every  age  life  has  a  certain  charm, — 
You're  going?     Come,  permit  me,  please,  I  beg  you'll  take 

my  arm. 
\  take  your  arm!     Why  take  your  arm?     I'd  thank  you  to 

be  told 
I'm  old  enough  to  walk  alone,  but  not  so  very  old. 

At  last,  in  1889,  the  poems  stopped,  because 
there  were  so  few  of  the  class  left,  and  the  meet 
ings  were  so  sad.  In  1891,  Holmes  writes  to  a 
friend:  "Our  old  raft  of  eighteen-twenty-niners  is 
going  to  pieces;  for  the  first  time  no  class-meeting 
is  called  for  the  8th  of  January.  I  shall  try  to  get 
the  poor  remnant  of  the  class  together  at  my 
house;  but  it  is  doubtful  whether  there  is  life 
enough  left  for  a  gathering  of  half  a  dozen.  I 
have  a  very  tender  feeling  to  my  coevals. " 


247 
CHAPTER   XI 

A    FEW    STRAY    FACTS 

In  1858  Holmes  moved  from  his  house  in  Mont 
gomery  Place  to  21  Charles  street,  near  the 
Charles  River;  and  here  he  was  neighbor  to  Gov 
ernor  Andrew,  the  war  governor  of  Massachusetts, 
and  James  T.  Fields,the  publisher.  He  afterward 
occupied  another  house  on  Charles  street,  and 
finally,  in  1871,  moved  to  Beacon  street,  where 
was  his  home  to  the  end  of  his  life. 

In  1882  he  resigned  his  professorship  at  Har 
vard  and  devoted  himself  to  literary  work,  writing, 
after  this,  his  last  book  of  table  talks,  which  he 
called  "Over  the  Teacups."  In  1886  he  visited 
Europe.  With  the  exception  of  the  journey  which 
he  took  when  a  young  man  studying  medicine,  this 
was  his  only  trip  abroad.  He  was  gone  only  four 
months,  including  the  voyage  both  ways,  and  spent 
most  of  his  time  in  the  little  isle  of  Britain.  It 
seemed  as  if  he  disliked  being  long  away  from 
home,  or  even  away  from  Boston. 

Dr.   Holmes  was  an    ingenious  man,    and   had 


248 

many  fads  and  fancies.  He  was  the  inventor  of 
the  small  stereoscope  for  hand  use, — such  as  those 
used  for  looking  at  photographs.  The  first  one  he 
made  himself  entirely,  all  but  the  lenses,  and  he 
often  used  to  say  that  he  might  have  made  a  for 
tune  out  of  this  invention  if  he  had  patented  it. 
Yet,  he  seems  never  to  have  regretted  that  he  had 
not  done  so,  thinking  perhaps  that  the  public  had 
been  the  gainer  by  his  loss. 

A  life-long  hobby  of  his  was  photography — be 
ginning  in  the  days  when  this  art  was  not  so  easy 
and  common  as  it  is  now.  He  became  a  really 
skillful  artist  in  it,  and  made  many  pictures  of  the 
old  gambrel-roofed  house  and  scenes  about  Harvard 
College,  which  have  been  preserved  and  may  prove 
useful  to  future  historians. 

Once  he  thought  he  could  learn  to  play  on 
the  violin.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  had  no  ear 
for  harmony,  and  could  never  produce  music. 
Still,  he  shut  himself  up  in  his  study  and 
scraped  away  hour  after  hour,  for  two  or  three 
winters.  At  the  end  of  that  time  he  could  play 
two  or  three  simple  tunes  so  that  they  could  be 


249 

recognized;  then  he  gave  it  up  and  never  played 
any  more. 

One  of  his  fads  was  the  measuring  of  large 
trees.  When  he  traveled  about  the  country  he 
always  had  a  measuring  tape  in  his  pocket,  and 
this  he  would  stretch  around  the  trunk  of  every 
big  tree  he  saw.  When  he  went  to  England  he 
pulled  out  his  bit  of  string  to  see  if  the  giant  trees 
of  Old  England  were  as  big  as  the  giant  trees  of 
New  England.  He  tells  with  what  bated  breath 
and  beating,  fearful  heart  he  measured  one  tree  in 
particular  in  England  with  a  string  on  which  he  had 
measured  off  the  trunk  of  another  big  tree  in 
America.  * '  Twenty  feet,  and  a  long  piece  of 
string  left  !"  he  exclaims,  when  telling  of  it. 
' '  Twenty-one  feet — twenty-two — twenty-three,  — 
an  extra  heart-beat  or  two, — twenty-four — twenty- 
five,  and  six  inches  over  !  !  " 

He  finally  became  so  noted  as  an  authority  on 
big  trees  that  he  was  consulted  even  by  the 
famous  botanist,  Professor  Asa  Gray. 

In  "The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table" 
you  may  read  of  a  slice  of  a  hemlock  tree,  going 


2  5° 

straight  to  the  center,  and  showing  three  hundred 
and  forty-two  rings,  each  ring  representing  a  year 
of  life.  Holmes  really  had  this  tree  section,  and 
spent  much  time  sticking  pins  in  at  the  various 
rings,  each  pin  tagged  with  the  date  of  some  event 
that  was  taking  place  when  the  ring  was  forming. 

We  have  already  spoken  of  his  love  for  old 
books.  In  the  "  Autocrat"  he  says:  "I  like 
books — I  was  born  and  bred  among  them,  and 
have  the  easy  feelings,  when  I  get  into  their  pres 
ence,  that  a  stable-boy  has  among  horses.  I  don't 
think  I  undervalue  them,  either  as  companions  or 
instructors."  He  was  not  only  an  expert  in  judg 
ing  an  old  and  beautiful  book,  but  he  understood 
the  art  of  bookbinding,  and  sometimes  practiced 
it.  Here  is  a  sentence  of  his  about  books  that  we 
should  all  remember:  "Some  books  are  edifices, 
to  stand  as  they  are  built ;  some  are  hewn  stones, 
ready  to  form  a  part  of  future  edifices  ;  some  are 
quarries,  from  which  stones  are  to  be  split  for 
shaping  and  after  use." 

Any  one  who  has  read  the  stirring  ballad  of 
"Old  Blue,"  entitled  "  How  the  Old  Horse  Won 


251 

the  Bet, "  will  guess  that  Holmes  knew  something 
about  horse-racing.  What  could  be  more  vivid 
than  this: 

"Go  !" — Through  his  ears  the  summons  stung 

As  if  a  battle-trump  had  rung; 

The  slumbering  instincts  long  unstirred 

Started  at  the  old  familiar  word; 

It  thrills  like  flame  through  every  limb,- 

What  means  his  twenty  years  to  him? 

The  savage  blow  his  rider  dealt 

Fell  on  his  hollow  flanks  unfelt; 

The  spur  that  pricked  his  staring  hide 

Unheeded  tore  his  bleeding  side; 

Alike  to  him  are  spur  and  rein, — 

He  steps  a  five-year-old  again  ! 

One  of  his  most  cherished  memories  was  that  of 
seeing  the  famous  steed  Plenipotentiary  win  the 
Derby;  this  was  when  Holmes  was  in  England  as 
a  young  man;  and  indeed  he  knew  "a  neat,  snug 
hoof,  a  delicate  pastern,  a  broad  haunch,  a  deep 
chest,  a  close  ribbed-up  barrel,  as  well  as  any 
other  man  in  the  town." 

Besides  these  things,  he  was  fond  of  boxing,  of 


252 

boating,  and  other  forms  of  sport;  and  he  knew  the 
fine  points  about  all  of  these  manly  pastimes. 

You  must  not  think,  however,  that  Holmes  was 
not  a  hard  worker  and  a  careful  student.  He 
wrote  easily  and  freely,  but  revised  with  the  great 
est  care;  and  he  prepared  his  college  lectures  over 
every  year,  keeping  them  up  to  date  while  he  was 
constantly  studying  and  reading  and  learning  new 
things  about  his  profession. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE     END     COMES 

The  life  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  flowed  like 
a  placid  river,  with  scarcely  a  ripple  upon  its  sur 
face.  He  was  born  and  grew  up  and  passed  all  his 
life  near  that  ' '  hub  "  he  has  made  so  famous,  sur 
rounded  by  throngs  of  friends,  never  visited  by 
sorrow,  always  fortunate,  always  happy.  He 
found  amusement  in  everything,  for  he  looked 
on  the  bright  side  of  life  and  turned  everything  into 
humor.  And  at  last  he  died,  painlessly,  serenely, 


253 

sitting  in  his  chair,  having  been  up  and  about  to 
the  very  last  day.  This  final  event — we  cannot 
call  it  sad — occurred  October  7,  1894.  He  was 
eighty-five  years  old. 

We  cannot  better  close  this  study  of  America's 
most  genial  poet-humorist  than  by  quoting  the  fol 
lowing  appreciative  and  most  touching  lines  from 
an  English  journal: 

"THE    AUTOCRAT" 

"  The  Last  Leaf  !  "     Can  it  be  true, 
We  have  turned  it,  and  on  you, 

Friend  of  all  ? 

That  the  years  at  last  have  power  ? 
That  life's  foliage  and  its  flower 

Fade  and  fall  ? 

Was  there  one  who  ever  took 
From  its  shelf,  by  chance,  a  book 

Penned  by  you, 

But  was  fast  your  friend  for  life, 
With  one  refuge  from  its  strife 

Safe  and  true  ? 
***** 


254 

From  the  Boston  breakfast  table 
Wit  and  wisdom,  fun  and  fable, 

Radiated 

Through  all  English-speaking  places 
When  were  science  and  the  Graces 

So  well  mated  ? 

Of  sweet  singers  the  most  sane, 
Of  keen  wits  the  most  humane, 

Wide,  yet  clear. 
Like  the  blue,  above  us  bent, 
Giving  sense  and  sentiment 

Each  its  sphere  ; 

With  a  manly  breadth  of  soul, 
And  a  fancy  quaint  and  droll, 

Ripe  and  mellow  ; 
With  a  virile  power  of  "hit," 
Finished  scholar,  poet,  wit, 

And  good  fellow  ! 

Years  your  spirit  could  not  tame, 
And  they  will  not  dim  your  fame; 

England  joys 

In  your  songs,  all  strength  and  ease, 
And  the  "dreams"  you  "wrote  to  please 

Gray-haired  boys." 

— London  Punch. 


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